The Golan Heights and Fatima

One of the attractions of Damascus was that from there I’d be able to visit the Syrian part of the Golan Heights. Large parts of this hilly land above the Sea of Galilee were lost to Israel in the 1967 Six days’ war. This happened when Israel took advantage of its military advances undertaken in response to Syrian air raids on Galilee. These raids had been provoked by a pre-emptive Israeli strike on Egypt, which itself had been triggered by Israeli fears of being attacked first.

Things tend to get complicated and interconnected in this part of the world. The high incidence of threats and paranoia, justifed or otherwise, lends an extra edge to the fraught convolutions of the region.

For Israel the Golan is a 'spoil of war'. One that Israel justifies its hold over by referring to the facts that a) Syria struck first - in the north I mean, and b) Syria refuses to make peace, in contrast to Egypt which did so in 1978 and Jordan in 1994. So as the logic goes: as long as the state of war continues, why should the gains of war be given up?

This is particularly the case because the Israeli occupied Golan affords excellent views over Galilee. As such, in the eyes of the Israelis, and perhaps in the eyes of the Syrians too, it might prove a very efficacious launch pad for military strikes upon Israel. Tactical necessity in this circumstance of continuing, albeit 'frozen' war (the mysterious warmth of September 6th 2007 notwithstanding) means Israel has assumed a stubborn, resolute attachment to the Golan, feeling unwilling to give it back in the absence of a peace, despite the various appeals of the UN General Assembly for her to do so in the absence of such a peace. Such an attachment, it must be admitted, is no doubt increased given the fact that 15% of Israel’s water supply comes from the Golan.

Nevertheless, the assumption one is persuaded to come to is that Israel would give it back if there were peace with Syria, in the same way Israel gave back the Sinai (eventually) to Egypt after peace was made with Egypt in 1978, courtesy of Carter, Begin and Sadat. This, indeed, is what was agreed to by Barak as part of the peace negotiations pursued with Assad in 2000: that the Golan would be returned. Well, except for that fateful ten metres of land, land that proved all too important for Hafez Al-Assad to sniff at.

Anyway, as I say, I wanted to go to the Golan and see the area for myself. Emily told me she'd like to come as well but unfortunately changed her mind because she had to study. Then I reflected on time pressures and the fact that you have to go to the Ministry of the Interior to get a Police pass and decided to postpone. I told myself that hopefully I'd have time to go when I got back from Lebanon, which I was now itching to get to.

In a hunt for a substitute distraction from Damascus I took a cab to the October War Panorama, which I hoped would be the next best thing. What Israel calls the Yom Kippur war, because Israel was invaded on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Syrians call the October War, because it happened in October (1973). What Israel considers a war it won and Syria lost is considered by Syria to be a war it won and Israel lost. Such is the flexibility of language.

The museum has proudly displayed in its garden a few Israeli tanks and anti-aircraft weapons, along with a collection of its own Russian built armaments. Inside are paintings commemorating the most significant moments in Syria's history, including Zenobia's near conquering of Rome and the moment when friendly relations were established between the ancient Syrians and the Arabs. The main attraction, the upstairs revolving panorama, is a pictorial representation of the 1974 Battle of Quneitra. Syria’s eventual success in this battle underlies Syria’s claims to have won the War, despite the fact that Syria failed to reacquire the vast majority of the land it lost in 67. To my understanding, only in the sense that Israel’s proud feelings of invincibility were questioned can it be supposed that Israel didn’t win. Or to put it another way Israel lost because the 1973 wasn’t the remarkable walkover 1967 had been. In any case, regarding Quneitra, a town right on the Syria/Golan border, Syria lost this in 67 along with the rest of the Golan but got it back again in 1974. The ferocious battle that happened here is lovingly, lavishly detailed, although Israeli flags are oddly absent from amongst the Israeli forces, while much is made, as one might expect, of the disreputable way in which the retreating Israelis trashed much of the city as a goodbye gesture.

And trashed the town of Quneitra remains. As I understand it, the political capital to be made by the Syrian Government in keeping Quneitra in the wreck of the state it’s in, still exceeds the value of doing anything more constructive with it, for example rebuilding and redeveloping it and allowing it to be resettled. So it’s kept as it was found after Israel moved out, glorious evidence of the inglorious bestiality of the losers, etc.

My guide around the museum was a friendly, happy-looking tour guide. Let’s call her Fatima. You can’t visit the museum without such a guide, which comes with the relatively expensive cost of the ticket. Because I was alone, I had her all for myself, which was nice. She kindly let me take a photograph of a painting of Bashar Assad’s family, which I think was against the rules, as well as a painting of Assad standing next to the president of North Korea, who gave money to Syria for the building of the museum. The picture of Assad’s family included his elder brother, Basil, who died tragically in a car accident in 1994. Because of this accident his younger brother’s plans to be a relatively obscure eye surgeon in London, married to his British born wife, were scuppered by his father when he ordered him back to Damascus to prepare for his future Presidential role by joining the army.

A great deal of my tour guide’s speech was clearly scripted, one suspects not by her. State propaganda, or selective interpretations of reality, might be phrases you might want to employ to describe the content if you wanted to be uncharitable. In any case it was illuminating at least of how Syria sees itself in relation to its regrettable tensions with Israel - or regrettable at least to we who wish peace for the world. Maybe the regime actually benefits from these tensions. On this my jury is still out.

What was really interesting, however, was how Fatima changed not only in what she said but how she spoke, her tone, her timbre, when we walked between the exhibits. Normally when she has larger groups she's presumably silent at these times. But now, alone with me, she wanted to speak off the script. No, she didn’t open up and confess to disbelieving everything she’d just told me about the glorious struggle etc. She just wanted to know, after I told her I was an English teacher, how she could improve her English. The surreal juxtaposition between this honest human enquiry and her self-conscious performance as a formal representative of her nation, an Ambassador of her Government, was striking and amusing. I suggested she could listen to the radio, to BBC World Service for example, or else watch CNN or BBC World. Also that she could join the Damascus British Council library, from which she could borrow books and tapes at various grades of language competence. A problem, of course, is that this way she doesn’t practice her speaking, nor can her grammar errors be corrected. For this she needs to attend a course. I suspected, rightly, that her pay bracket would exclude her from the British Council’s courses (which are typically the best in any given city) – she sighed whimsically as I suggested such a course – but I told her there must be other cheaper courses, many of which would be almost as good if not just as good. Finally I left her with an idea that seemed to impress her. Why not ask your employers to pay for British Council lessons? You're an important tour guide in English, speaking to people like me. Lots of companies pay for their staff to learn at The British Council if it assists the selling of their products. Why not ask them to subsidise you so you can be even better at your job? Of course, I didn’t expect her Government to agree to the idea but one can but try.

Update

As my presumably small readership will have noted, I've been silent for over a week. This is not because I have become uncharacteristically laconic and spared the world my words but because I have opened a new blog at:

www.livingoutsidetime.blogspot.com

On that blog I write about my life and salient thoughts since leaving Egypt, and I will write about Kuwait, where I have now been living for 8 days.

This blog will continue to post entries about the rest of my trip through Middle East. I promise to get through to Egypt one day, achieving finally in my words what I accomplished in my body. But it may take awhile. Internet access is limited here for me. Obviously, I begin to forget things so the clock is ticking I know.

The Middle East and Turkey

When Emily and I talked generally about the Middle East we sighfully agreed that it’s in a mess.

She blames Israel and America more than I do. She focused her thoughts on America however, since she feels as an American that America is more her business than is Israel, which is an attitude I very much respect. Personally, I want to look more into the history of the region, and note how the problems might be traced to the collapse of The Ottoman Empire, which in its own bungling, tyrannical way until 1918 had at least kept the region in relative peace and harmony for most of the previous 400 years. The opportunity only arose for the French and the British (that would be people like me) to carve the region up into artificially devised nation states under their own Christian suzerainty because the allies had won the First World War, and because the Ottomans had elected to fight on the losing side. When I was in Gallipoli I learnt how Turkey’s decision to side with the Germans was actually a very close run thing. Nineteenth century tradition put Turkey on the side of the British and the French against the Russians, after all. Now, in 1914, while Russia was still the enemy, so too were Britain and France, and Germany, strong as she’d become in the late nineteenth century, was not strong enough to prove a good bet for the Ottomans to support.

The ‘What if’ train of thought regarding the Ottomans choosing different friends during the First World War interests me greatly.

· Turkey, had she joined the Allies’ side, would have allowed the Allies, early in the War, to open a third front against the Central Powers. The Allies would have quickly got what they would have only achieved eventually if Gallipoli had been successful: a way, with the Russians, of exerting an encircling pressure on Germany and Austria from three sides, from the South as well as from the East and West. Also, Turkey’s support would have allowed Russia and the West easier access for military co-operation through the Dardanelles. The War might not have ‘been over by Christmas’, but would it have lasted a full four years and led to as many deaths as it did? Would it, moreover, through the sufferings it imposed on the Russian people, have established the conditions appropriate for the reception there of the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. Would the Russian revolution have happened? Would we have witnessed Stalinism? Might the idea of communitarianism, of there being possibilities for communal life beyond the power of money, still be a relatively pure one? Might capitalism today not be quite as smug as it is, if communitarianism as a vision had not been mired as it has been by the disastrous legacy of the Bolsheviks?

· Although the Ottoman Empire had been weakening throughout the nineteenth century, without the experience of defeat in the First World War, would it have collapsed as it did? If Turkey had remained either neutral or fought on the Allies side the chances of Turkey losing the War would have been lower, the chances of her Empire surviving correspondingly higher. If it had survived, as it probably would have, how different would the Middle East be today? It is hard to know. Most probably Turkey’s empire would have been dismantled at some point because it had been ailing for so long. But perhaps this would have happened in a more gradual, less arbitrary manner, in a manner moreover overseen by Muslims, not Christians. Maybe the Persian, Arab and Turkish Muslims would have been able to come to some kind of peaceful agreement as to how best to reconfigure political relations between their peoples in a new dispensation replacing the Ottoman. Then, not only might the numerous twentieth century wars between Muslims not have happened, but the sense of humiliation that the Islamic world has felt in the face of Western and Israeli power in the region not have occurred. In consequence, Muslims not feeling such a resentment and injustice, would have meant far less impetus would have been given to the development of Islamic fundamentalism, a phenomenon which, as many a Muslim would agree, has wrought considerable damage not only on Islam itself but on the world in general.

· Quite probably, there’d be no state of Israel today, for good or ill (depending on your opinion). Or at least not the kind of State of Israel we have now. Zionism begins in the late nineteenth century so one cannot attribute the origin of the desire amongst Jews to increase their presence in the Holy Land to an opportunism provoked by the Ottoman Empire’s collapse. Quite probably Turkey’s nineteenth century decision to make land legally available for Jewish buyers would have continued. Had the Turkish Empire survived, the British wouldn’t have written the Balfour Declaration but possibly Turkey, as a victorious ally of the British and French, might have been persuaded to continue their history of relative toleration towards the Jews and allowed them some more land, or even a state of their own, under the umbrella of their continuing imperial dominion. That would have been more likely if Turkey underwent a degree of secularization in the years after WWI, something which might still have happened, at least to an extent, without the specific need of an Ataturk, though by no means necessarily. Also important is that much of the impetus behind the intensification of Jewish desire to settle the Holy Land in the 1930s and 1940s was the threat from, and the need to escape, the European Holocaust. Hitler may still have risen to power in a nationalist reaction to the German defeat in WWI. But how long would that war have lasted? Surely it would have been over sooner? And then, would the defeated Germany have been quite as seriously humiliated as it was by the 1919 Treaty of Versailes, a treaty which to a great extent was a calculated act of vengeance against Germany for the very expensive war that had lasted over four years and cost millions of lives? And if in consequence of Germany not being as crushed into the dust as she was, would we have seen Hitler? And if not, and had not experienced the holocaust might we have found that many more Jews would have been happy to stay as they had for generations in a Europe that many of them had grown to consider their home?

· There having been no need for the failed Gallipoli campaign, Australia and New Zealand wouldn’t have experienced their greatest military disaster ever. Nor, on the other hand, would they have felt the same impetus that they did feel, given the incompetent callousness of the British High Command, to sever (or loosen at least) the umbilical cord connecting them with the Motherland and so develop a sharper sense of separate, national identities.

· Would the population transfers/massacres of the Armenians have happened? Turkey justifies its understanding of the non-genocidal treatment it dealt out to the Armenians by referring to Armenian support as a fifth column within Turkey for the Russians, against whom Turkey was then fighting. So clearly, the Turks admit there were some significant attacks on the Armenians, even if they didn’t amount to genocide as they claim they didn’t. But if Turkey hadn’t supported Germany, there would have been no fighting against the Russians for the Armenians to support at all. On the other hand, if Turkey’s intentions and treatment towards the Armenians were indeed as genocidal as the Armenians and many other countries say they were, would they have behaved this way if they’d been on the side of the Allies? I suspect that had Turkey chosen differently, the country would have been less destabilized, which would have given Turkey less cover or justification for its policy. Also, it would also have given Turkey less need for such a policy, especially if the war had ended quickly and the Turkish nation had not felt under the mortal peril that it did feel under. After all, the Turks had not started massacring Armenians when the Ottoman Empire had been alive and kicking, albeit ailing. They only started, according to the Armenians, in 1915, when it was under the threat of invasion and collapse. And they only intensified their policies further when there was a need to ensure the new country's future identity against its potential internal enemies. I am explaining, not justifying, the genocidal policies, if indeed they existed, as I suspect they did.

This type of 'What if', or counter-factual historiography, has come in for a fair amount of criticism, much of it reasonable. That said, indulging in it is fun and can provide insights. Or at least it can help you imagine how things might have been different, as a result of causes that led us to the present not happening. The problem is that we cannot know if a similar (to whatever extent) historical reality might nevertheless have been arrived at by a different route. Nor can we know what unforeseen events might have happened which may have deflected events off unimaginably to us now. A shadow presumption I was loosely holding throughout the above was that it would have been 'better' for humanity as a whole (as well as for the Turks) if the Turks had fought alongside the allies. But who knows if it might have been worse ultimately, if unforeseen developments I cannot imagine had occured. And obviously I am not intending to blame the Turks for all that happened, since all agents are responsible for what they do. I was just thinking out loud, as it were, and reflecting on how so many things in history are interconnected, and how relevant the past is to the present.

Ten Metres and the Moon

A couple of days before I met Emily and her friends Israel performed that raid you'll have heard about, the air raid that Israel at the time denied but has now admitted performing.

Some circles say Israel was attacking an emergent nuclear capacity imported via Tartous from North Korea. Whatever it was (obviously it was something), will no doubt come out in the wash.

From what I gather the Syrian people are increasingly worried about a war between the two countries. Personally I fail to understand how such would serve the self-interest of either nation. Syria is threatening vaguely to retaliate somehow in the indeterminate future. Israel, after owning up, eventually, to invading Syrian airspace declares that her defenses have been tested and proved resilient (whether that be a euphemism for a second Osirak or not).

It must be nice to say that, in any case, after last year's embarrassment at the hands of Hezbollah.

But the main feature of the whole scenario has been silence.

A weird thing about silence is that when it arises inappropriately, as it has now, it often tends to increase attention not decrease it, which is what you'd expect those being silent would prefer.

Can you believe that Syria and Israel came to within ten metres of land of finding peace in 2000? I can, but then I bear no illusions about the eccentricity of this particualr region of the blue planet. Syria wanted the beach. The beach of the Sea of Galilee. Israel said no. Syria said no to Israel's no and then both sides decided that, actually, on second thoughts we prefer being at war to losing or failing to gain ten metres of land. How stupid of us to forget.

This is but one of the myriad examples of the insanity of human posturing collecting around the fertile crescent. I could name many others. So, no doubt, could you. Well, as long as they like all this hatred and fear and histrionic pomposity - let them all get on with it is what I think; or at least am often tempted to.

Emily, if I might risk the perils of categorisation, is somewhat anti-Israeli in her stance. Beyond that vague brush I wouldn't want to delineate. It was very interesting to hear from her about how badly educated the American people are about the situation in the Middle East and of how grateful she feels to have learnt the other perspective and expereinced how things 'really are'. The Media and education system in America, so she said, strides a fairly uncontroversially pro-Israeli line, in the context of its broader loyalty to the line of the American military, industrial and political complex.

Of course, to be 'pro-Israeli' can mean any number of positions from extreme left (the Israeli Meretz party for example, which some might even call anti-zionist) to extreme right, where ideas of removing the Palestinians from Israel proper and extending Israel beyond its 1967 borders begin to emerge. I'm not exactly clear where America positions itself, but somewhere in the middle I would imagine. Well, except amongst the Christian fundamentalists who'd be somewhere however wackily to the right, despite their inherent theological and somewhat patronising prejudices against Judaism.

I was a little unsure how Emily rated my stance regarding Israel. I wasn't that clear in my statements mainly because my position is not clear or simplistic, just as the region isn't. But I reckon she gathered that I'm not anti-Israeli, in that I think such a polarisation of reality, in this field as in all, is childish and irresponsible and that both sides, or as it were all sides in the Middle Eastern dispute, are to blame and at fault and need to yield (so it is in all conflicts). If that makes me an anti-Palestinian in some person's mind on account of my being a 'status quo' supporting fence-sitter then an anti-Palestinian I am in the mind of that person, but not in mine. Nothing would please me more than for Palestinians to be as joyful and happy as their fellow Muslims in Turkey and Syria seem to be, and for them to benefit, as can we all, from friendly relations with the ancestors of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. Are we sure that makes me anti-Palestinian? I suggest it does not.

It was enjoyable telling Emily about my experiences as a 19 year old with the organisation headed by the curious, Korean gentleman known as Sun Myung Moon. She was shocked at first when I told, as are many. Then, as usual, she became less so when I told her I was only 'with the Moonies' for three weeks, that I never gave them any money (ok, three pounds), never stayed with them, never prayed at any of their services, and never abandoned my questioning mind to them. I say that just to make things clear that 'I Was Never a Moonie'. And I say that because, so I later learnt, alot of people at university thought I had been a Moonie all the years that I was there, just because they had learnt, correctly, that I had spent some time with them. Even highly educated Oxbridge rejects, so it seems, will formulate their own projections in the absence of supporting facts. So I'm obviously a bit sensitive about that.

It's nonethless true, on the other hand, that the Moonies' ministrations left my cognitive faculties somewhat temporarily impaired. I hadn't asked them to warp my mind, mind you. No, they did that without my needing to ask. How kind. Actually, whether or not they used the sophisticated mind controlling techniques, learnt during the Korean War, that many say they use, I'm not sure. Certainly I could believe this. But no doubt much of the effect they wrought on me must be linked to my own susceptibility to them at the time. It's true, before I paid them a visit I was young, I was idealistic (actually I still am! Or at leat when I'm not depressed). I was also unhappy with my University studies and generally feeling pretty weird and dislocated. I was very glad, moreover, to talk to people who at least pretended to talk about God and life seriously, with passion, without being conventionally religious. With people, who to all appearences sake, seemed extremely friendly and welcoming and even, might it be ventured, 'loving'. All that swept me into their power temporarily, it is true.

Beyond that there's no doubt that my experiences with the Reverend had an enormous impact on my life on account of how I reacted to the experience. Materially it meant I dropped out of University. I’m not sure I really needed to but to my Mother and the Principal of my college it felt like a good enough reason to convalesce. I didn’t put up any resistance. In any case there was still that original dissatisfaction with studying Philosophy (too arid, too pedantic) that had lain behind my lunar expedition in the first place. In any case taking time out sounded like a good idea. This was also because….

Spiritually, internally, the effect on leaving the Moonies had been dramatic. Note I talk specifically about what happened after I disengaged from The Unification Church, not the effect of that Church itself, which had been to turn me into a paranoid zombie. As I emerged from its malign and tentacled snare, which had stretched itself throughout my teenage mind, I experienced a tremendous feeling of rebirth and liberation, and ensuing psychic states of peace, bliss and ecstasy of a kind I’d never known before. Without question I increasingly came to associate this liberating force (correctly or incorrectly, delusionally or accurately) with the specific transcendent person of Jesus Christ, who became a very real and mystical presence for me.

As a child I had, to be honest, always held an extremely soft spot for the Nazarene. This absolutely in spite of my bored lack of interest in and basic disrespect for the established Christian Churches. Overall, however, my affection and regard had been cerebral and idealistic, not existential as such. I thought Jesus was a great and tremendous person, as so many people do. It was only after my rejection of the Moonies that my sense of closeness to Jesus and the vividness of my spiritual experiences in general came to significant life. The practical effects of this period of near mystical trance were twofold. Firstly, I lost all interest in finding work or engaging much in externally directed activities, keen as I became to savour and luxuriate in my newfound sense of a discovered inner treasure. Luckily, due to a modest trust fund and a mother who didn’t mind me doing nothing very much, this was possible. Secondly, I decided to return to Durham University in the autumn of 1991, but to study Theology this time as a way of giving expression to my newfound, developing interest in the spiritual, and the Christian tradition in particular.

Syria and The Family

The funniest, most memorable thing Emily said was about religion, something hard to evade in the Middle East. Reflecting in general on the madness of the world, she noted how bizarre it would be if Christians had their own variant of the muezzin's call to prayer, publically, loudly broadcasted:

'Drink the Blood of Christ! You must drink the blood of Christ to be saved!' shouted out five times a day

Imagining such a spectacle floating over a city full of people going about their business made me chortle and wonder at how eeirie, alarming and strange that would be.

Certainly the Islamic version seems less freaky. Undoubtedly, its content is less dramatic and extreme. Or maybe I only say that becasue I don't speak Arabic or hear it everyday. Church bells, our version of the call to prayer, don't mean anything. They're just a reminder that we ought to be up on the hill. If there must be a public chivvying (must there? Really?) I definitely prefer things this way, to say nothing specific about God, at least in public. Another advantage is that bells are less inclined to ring out at 5 in the morning.

It was fascinating to get a glimpse of the nature of Syrian family life, hearing about the Christian family Emily's living with. The Christians are just as religious as the Muslims and have similar attitudes towards family, courtship and marriage. Apart from obvious theological differences, then, the only existential differences are in the Christians' attire (no headscarves) and their belief in the sinlessness of alcohol, if drunk moderately of course. In practice, both Muslims and Christians drink in Syria, only Christians less of a guilty conscience.

As a Westerner from the progressive realms of family dysfunction and disintegration, I've been programmed to appreciate the all-surpassing supremacy of the individual in matters of familial politics. In the West, to an ever increasing degree, the extent to which families stay together and the shape of that togetherness when they do, is determined by the free individual decisions and commitments made by each of the members involved. Templates of formal duty and obligation being oh so droll and pre-sixties, it's now up to us in our own ways to determine if and how the nuclear, let alone extended, family survives.

Personally, I want to have my cake and eat it. Ultimately I feel I should be able to. Why else have the cake, or even make it? I want there to be no formal regimen dictating how families should be structured or interact. Yet I want that they cohere, survive and blossom into ever intensifying domains of happiness, wherein an intensity of personal freedom and authenticity combines with an intensity of rootedness, connectedness, and love. I fear, nevertheless, that as so often in life this is easier said than done, especially given our current Western spiritlessness and the moral disorientation we experience; on account of which we wrestle to make sense of the right accommodation to make between the claims of self and other.

Having lost to secular materialism a reliable mooring or anchor for a vocabulary of duty and obligation, it's difficult, and can sound hollow and trite, to tell people how they should behave. The only potent basis to do so seems to be the appeal to victimhood, as a tactic for securing self-advancement or compensation for real or imagined slights. This essentially punitive dynamic keeps alive the ghost of an overarching moral firmament. But it's a firmament that makes no demands on us and asks nothing from us, to deflect us from our freedom; until, that is, it rubs its nose in our faces when, as a result of its moral silence, we end up pissing each other off, often mightily. Its mode of operation, therefore, is passive not active. Morality reigns, but in a reactive, not proactive way.

One gets the impression, from our what is said by our media, art, teachers, even from our religious leaders, that little interferes with or questions this individual freedom. And yet ours, nonetheless, is an astonishingly litigious and punitive society; ruled by fears of petty officialdom, permeated with the strangulating self-righteousness of the aggrieved. That paradox is a central conundrum of our time. Through society's impositions and restrictions, we are daily reminded that we are not islands and must live together, despite the fact that our ideology is one of atomised individuality, enjoining loyalties to none higher than the self.

Needless to say, it's not like this in Syria, or the Middle East generally, where life constitutes a different kind of bed of thorns. Here the moral universe is still proactive, sometimes very. But with that same love of imbalance that we share - only differently expressed, the Islamic world makes certain to render its interpretation of proactive morality extreme and one-sided.

So much that our own 'Enlightened', democratic, individualised instincts tell us was wrong about the life of our own ancestors is still very much alive in the Middle East. By which I mean the imposition on individuals by the community to which they belong of an iron-fisted, inflexible order or schemata of how to live their lives. Young women, even Christian ones, must be home early in the evening and can't do what they want, or marry whom they want, unless their desires happen to co-incide with their parents'. As for young men, these too suffer, since unless they are to be secretive or indulge in gay adventures, they can't enjoy romantic love, let alone sex, until they're married, something which itself requires not only their parents' agreement but the satisfaction of their girlfriend's parents that they are respectable and, more importantly, sufficiently rich.

Much of this I already knew. What I was interested to hear from Emily, though, who has spent a long time talking to young Syrians and other Middle Easterners both in English and her rapidly improving Arabic, is what young people themselves feel about family life.

As I knew, loyalty to family is fundamental. Such a loyalty is nothing strange anywhere in the world except in the west to an increasing extent. In Syria, family is so often an economic necessity in any case, even before higher emotional or ideological considerations of love of family are considered. Young people will stay at home before they marry not only for reasons of propriety or mutual affection but economics, since parents, one hopes, make for cheap or even free landlords. Similarly, in an age of limited welfare, and unreliable employment and pension provision, to be old and without a family is not wise. So old people will often stay with their children until they die, and condition the young to look after the old, reminding them that they too will one day look and feel as unimpressive as they do. But beyond that it's clear Syrians hold the Family in a very high regard and consider their attachments to other family members to be more important than any other.

This is not so strange from a Western point of view, though it may increasingly be from a Western European point of view. In Slovakia, for example, young people have similar economic relations to their family. In addition, young Slovaks will also talk about their families, and visit their parents, in a way that clearly shows a very high esteem for the institution. How much of that esteem is heartfelt, how much routinised habit and convention, however, I was never that sure. A certain suspicion of taboo collects around talking negatively about ones family relations. Of that I was sure. Given the prevalence of domestic violence in Slovakia, yet the fact that I've personally heard about none, suggests to me at least that carpets must bulge in Slovakia, having had much swept under them.

Regarding Syria, I wouldn't want to speculate about the prevalence of domestic violence in the family. I'm not sure what kind of figures exist, or how data could be collected? I would suspect that the presumption is that all is harmonious in the family; that if it isn't, insubordination from children and wife is usually is to blame; that redresses made against the more tender elements of the family against that insubordination are justified, and that ultimately all this is the business of the head of the household, the man. One suspects Syrians, like most Middle Easterners, will basically be thinking – mind your own business, oh Western man of inferior religiosity and disintegrating culture. My family is private, it is not even a domain for other Muslims, let alone you.

Anyway, I'm just trying to map out the reality of the matter. If I am mistaken, I apologise, especially if I have offended, which I'm obviously not trying to do. I never try to cause offense. Offense as an emotion closes the mind and retards discourse. I do not seek boring, stilted or defensive interaction. Still, if one does find what I write offensive, join the club. I find much offensive about the world, including the idea that people might find me offensive when I'm not trying to be offensive:) Oh well, the world is an offensive place. That is no new revelation.

I didn't ask Emily about domestic violence. I just asked what Syrians had said about the normal restrictions of family life. She found they weren't always that happy about them but considered them so normal that nothing much could be done about them. Speaking out about the regulations or defying them is rare.

No doubt Syrians see family quite differently than I. You think normal what you know. It's hard for outsiders to understand or judge different forms of cultural life. Usually if you try you either idolise them as excessively superior to your own, or else desperately inferior if not evil.

Personally I wouldn't like to live in restrictive families that tell their adult members what to do, or how to live. I didn't like restrictiveness even when I was a child. I'd like it even less as an adult. But hey that's just me.

I'm impressed, anyway, that their families are so strong and cohere, unlike ours. Its just that, for me, I'd like a family that could combine that with radical freedom. A difficult concoction for sure. A challenge.

The Popularity of Arabic

I arranged to meet Emily by the big Ummayad mosque, the main mosque across from the 3rd century Western Temple gate, Rome's offering to Jupiter. To here Jesus is understood at some time in the future to return before he converts all Christians to Islam. So much for the much anticipated drama of the Mount of Olives, then.

Emily brought along her Australian friend, Sarah, and an American called Kevin, who only arrived in Damascus the previous day. Like Emily they're here to improve their Arabic. Apparently, so I've been reading, interest in studying Arabic has risen noticeably since 9/11. I wonder what the motivations behind this might be. I can think of three reasons, all interrelated, in no special order of importance.

Firstly, on 9/11 the world suddenly became an 'interesting place' again, in a way it had stopped being when the Berlin Wall collapsed and nothing acted any longer as a defining, chiselling force to give shape to America's sense of identity and importance. Unrivalled hegemony was all well and good, but a bit vacuous and tended to mean the President's sexual proclivities became front page news. Nothing else had the power to fascinate in a more serious way. The nineties were years of global innocence, but trivial and inane. At last with 9/11, America had a proper enemy again and the West could get down to the serious business of being frightened and martial, just like in the good old, cold war days days when we could believe, like we can now, that our whole lives are being lived inside a second rate Hollywood blockbuster. On the principle 'Know your Enemy', therefore, Arabic became important as the language of the 'enemy', despite the fact that most Muslims don't speak Arabic as their first language.

Secondly, some people in the west felt guilty for the ways they perceived the West had treated the Arabic sphere in previous decades, to a degree sensing that New York had deserved being attacked by Al-Qaeda, despite the fact that lots of non-westerners died in these attacks and that much of the the Islamic world immediately condemned them. So again, on the principle, 'Know your enemy' but for the opposite reason - to be reconciled to it - Arabic became more attractive as a field of study.

Thirdly, I imagine Arabic has become more popular simply because more people are now aware of the Middle East than they were before. No other geo-political region of the world receives as much interest and attention, because of 9/11 centrally, but also because of the worsening of the Israeli-Palestinian situation after the failed Camp David summit and the invasion of Iraq.

I definitely got the impression, which was nice, that the people I met in Damascus were only learning Arabic for the second of the two reasons, for peaceable and genuinely educative ones, which is obviously a good thing.

Ash Sham (aka Damascus)

Four and a half million people live in Damascus and they do so 600 metres above sea level.

Today I feel like being historical. Apologies to those affected or offended if I'm wrong or oversimplifying.

So it appears, Abraham hung out here for awhile before moving south to Canaan. Later, from about 1100 BC, Damascus was the capital of an independent state called Aram Damascus which got into fights with the Israelites. With the Northern Israelites, it shared a common enemy in Assyria, a far larger Kingdom than either, to which both ultimately lost their independence and a large part of their populations in the eighth century BC, since it was a custom of Assyria to deport its conquered peoples and resettle them. Certainly, the notion that over 25 thousand Northern Israelites were moved east is the axiomatic belief underlying the indefatigable idea of the hidden, abidingly significant, existence of the 'Lost Ten Tribes of Israel'. Regarding the Aram Damascenes, it seems they were moved by one Tiglath-Pilsener III, whose name obviously suggests he'd have done better brewing beer, south to the Moabite town of Kir, near the Dead Sea, or to Al-Karak, as it's now known in Jordan.

Then, after the Assyrian domination, like so many places in this part of the world, Damascus was controlled first by Babylonia, then by Persia, Greece, Rome and finally by Byzantium.

During the Greek era under the Seleucids, it shone less significantly as a cultural centre than Lattakia and Antakya (Antioch) to the north, but under the Romans it became a more important city at last, as the northernmost member of the Decapolis, a union of 10 semi-independent cities; and then from AD 37 as part of the quasi-independent Kingdom of the Nabateans. Christocentric as ones education is, during this time one might say the most notable event to have occurred in Damascus was Paul's decision, courtesy of a celestial vision, to stop persecuting Christian Jews and become one himself. Before long he would take the message of the Gospel to the gentiles. A formative moment in the history of the Gospel and the world one might to say. And for good or ill too, depending on your opinion.

During the Islamic period Damascus' most important era was when it was the capital city of the first Ummayad Caliphate (Islamic Kingdom essentially) from 665 to 750, when Islamic hegemony reached to Northern Spain and the Punjab in Pakistan. Until the Abbasids and Baghdad usurped the supremacy, as Dynastys and cities do, since when Damascus has never been as important. After the Abbasids, Damascus yielded to the successive overlordship of the Fatimids from Cairo, the Seljuk Turks, the Ayyubids from Cairo- including Saladin - though some of these ruled from Damascus, the Mamlukes (from Cairo), whose rule was interrupted by the Mongols for awhile, the Ottoman Turks from Istanbul, and finally, after two years of a fledgeling independence, to the French of all people, whose twenty six year period of control finally ended in 1946 .

I didn't get to explore much beyond the Old City and the area of the new city directly to its west. Though I did find the time to get to Qasion, a mountainous area of bars and restaurants offering impressive views of the city. Though I'd probably have seen more and had a better time if it wasn't dark when I was there and hadn't been so windy.

Damascus

At twenty two dollars my room was the most expensive I'd had in a while. I thought I'd flavour my entrance to the Syrian capital with a dose of luxury. Unfortunately, with no air con, no TV, and no private bathroom it definitely wasn't worth the price. Even access to BBC World in the living room area and the included breakfast didn't prevent me migrating to a hostel for the following two nights.

In the evening I strolled towards the old city, about half a kilometre to the east past the railway station. As soon as I entered the main covered bazaar I knew that in a crucial way the Syria I'd come to love was gone. The prevalence of other westerners was far higher. The inevitable effect on the locals was to make the likes of me both less of a curiosity, less of a novelty, and more of a focus for that kind of systematised, commercial targeting that always develops in tourist centres. I noted how the tremendously friendly, welcoming spirit of the Syrian people, though still in evidence, was less vivid, had become mixed with traces of an inauthenticity I hadn't felt before. This, no doubt, was born of a spirit of over-familiarity with the likes of I, a wearing away of that fascination for the strange and exotic which we westerners occasion in the rest of the country and would do here too, if only there weren't so many of us. It might also have to do with a greater knowledge on their part, acquired through practice and experience, of how we might best be persuaded to part with our money. Though I grant that's me being cynical.

On the other hand I can see how my perception was influenced by having come to Damascus after seeing so much of the rest of the country first. Most people don't do this. Most travellers come straight to Damascus, then travel on to either Aleppo or Palmyra, before seeing the more obscure areas. Some, of course, won't leave Damascus at all, though I'd say these would mainly be the westerners here on business. The other group of westerners I met in Damascus, beyond businessmen and travellers, were students, usually in their early twenties, here to study Arabic, often as part of a degree they were pursuing at home. If they took a course, it might be a month long, or last for many months. Or you could just turn up and plan to hang out in the place, learning Arabic while you're here. This was Emily's plan.

I was looking forward to seeing Emily again, who'd I'd left in Bergama in early August on her way to Izmir and the Greek Islands. Talking to her was not like talking to most people, no offence to most people intended, and I was looking forward to a bit of energy and fire in my life. We'd arranged to meet by the big Ummayad mosque at noon on the day after my arrival.

Before we met, however, I thought I'd check out the British Council in the morning because I was thinking I might like to work there. But there was nobody I could talk to about opportunities. So after reading the Observer for awhile and acknowledging, as expected, that the internal decor of the building was identical to the BC's in Sofia, Kathmandu, Cairo, Hong Kong and Bratislava, I took myself to the fancy Four Seasons. Here I enjoyed a five dollar coffee, a sofa, and the agreeable, amusing experience of being mistaken for somebody rich.

Reality Check

This blog has been hanging around in Syria for quite a while now. I just wanted to inform the universe that in fact I left Syria for Lebanon on September 10th. So I'm more than slightly behind. Now, as it happens, I'm in Jerusalem.

Anyway, for good or ill I decided to go slowly and be detailed and thorough and concentrate on some facinating conversations I have had, even if a lighter, more nimble approach might have been preferable to some or all of my readers - whoever you are.

A summary of where I've been since Lattakia before I return to my story. I'll try to sum up each place in no more than eight words.

Damascus - Massive old city, far more westerners

Beirut (Lebanon) - Soldiers on the street. Rife factionalism and Starbucks

Baalbek (Lebanon) - Enormous, extremely evocative ruins. Hezbollah T-shirts

Tripoli (Lebanon) Sunni dominated. Like Syria. No Hezbollah. Cool castle

Sidon (Lebanon) - Lovely gentle beach town. Very narrow streets

Tyre (Lebanon) - Lots of ancient ruins. Swam in the Mediterranean

Damascus (Syria) - Because I didn't want to fly to Jordan

Ma aoula (Syria) - Christian mountain town. Good views. Bought some Arak

Amman (Jordan) - Big and dusty. Ramadan strictly observed

Bethany (Jordan) - Israeli flag. Jesus baptised, Elijah caught a chariot

Petra (Jordan) - Vast Nabatean ruins built into rock. Camels. Bedouins.

Amman (Jordan) - Because I needed to cross at Allenby Bridge.

Jerusalem (Israel) - Schizoid capital of the Universe

Bethlehem (Israel) -Birthplace of creator of the Universe, (to Christians)

Tel Aviv (Israel) - Secular Israelis. Cafes and powdery sand. Diaspora museum

Jerusalem (Israel) - Because its Sukkot. Rest of Israel closes down

So now you know where I am and where I've been.

Plan now is to go back to Jordan on monday. I have to go back so I can get a Jordanian exit stamp. Otherwise supicious eyes will know I've been to Israel (as they might if they read my blog:)). Also, I left some stuff there. Then I'll rush down to Aqaba, take a boat to Nuweiba in Egypt and head to Cairo. My flight to Vienna leaves Thursday morning, the 11th October. One and a half days in Bratislava to remind myself what good beer tastes like and to pack up more of my stuff. Then I fly to London.

Hama in Noisy Motion

My abiding memory of Hama is the creaking noise of the turning of the enormous wheels called norrias that are scattered in the centre of town. Because both wheel and axle are made of wood, nothing works as a lubricant to induce a graceful flow. So an unearthly groaning, suggestive of a wounded extra-terrestrial dinosaur, breaks out from their motion. I saw one man hopefully trying to throw water on one. Did this help? It didn't seem to but maybe it limits damage in the long run. I'm no expert.

I'd read that young boys jump from the planks that push the water round as they turn but alas they weren't out and about when I was there.

In addition to the wheels, there's a hill that nothing seems to be on the top of, and the first modern shopping centre I'd seen in Syria. As well as this, there are some interesting lanes in and around the old city but, as I've written earlier, Hama suffered considerably during the bombings of 1982, when the whole city was besieged by the Government, so it's not quite what it was.

Finally, after twelve days in Syria I got on a bus for Damascus. And what a bus, not like any I'd seen. The seats were that light beige colour you find in swanky mercedes and jaguars; and so was their comfort, while the leg room was excessive and highly welcome. In considerable luxury I read up about Damascus and looked forward to the capital.

Liar

As I was waiting for my bus to Hama I did a very rare thing, for me anyway. I directly, unambiguously lied to someone's face. I don't just mean I allowed a mistaken impression to arise in his mind by remaining silent about a certain matter; or that I concealed the 'whole truth' about something and was 'economical with the truth'. Neither of these are lying, not really. They're just not being fully open, which is different.

If you insist they're forms of lying I'll say they're only 'negative' forms of lying. Spoken behaviours whereby you refuse to assume responsibility for the mistaken conclusions generated by your listener's projections onto or behind your words. The impression they might provoke could very well be contrary to what you meant, but that isn't because you uttered words confirming or constructing their false understanding. Doing that, as I see it, is the real lying - lying by commission, not omission. Obviously though, in a perfect world, i.e not this one, it would be wonderful if we could all be forever open and transparent with one another.

I didn't feel ashamed of my 'positive' lie. This might be because I didn't particularly warm to the 19 year old who asked me his lie-prompting question. If I'd told him the truth, this might have provoked him and his surrounding gang to pay me even more attention, when at that moment I just wanted to read my newspaper. But I must confess, there was a smidgeon of fear too; especially since this was an Alawite area and that, given my unusually pronounced sense of my own importance, I'd come to imagine I might be under the special scrutiny of the Government. I thought he might be a Government agent. Even if he wasn't I still didn't want to risk upping the stakes of my fledgling paranoia.

So when he asked me if I'd been to Israel I just said no while simultaneously wondering if my eye contact was relaxed and unassuming enough. I suppose that when you lie the eyes can give you away, either because they suddenly become distracted, or else too ardent in their gaze.

He seemed very proud of his culture and country. He was glad to point out, as I'd noticed, that the women are less hidden here. This is because there is more freedom than in conservative Aleppo and further into the Sunni areas to the east. Then a friend of his asked me if in the West women are different from men. I knew what he was getting at but I thought I'd try to be funny. So I gestured the outline of some shapely breasts and agreed that yes, they are different. It worked, which was great. What he wanted to say, of course, was that women have too much freedom, and wanted to know if I agreed. Unfortunately for him I didn't and just said that in my culture men and women are equal, which they are, if only in theory. He didn't want to defend his thoughts about women. I suspected he considered them self-evidently true.

No Beach

I never got to visit the sea in Lattakia, even though the Mediterranean was one of the major reasons for my visit. If I'd taken a taxi further north, I'd have found a beach but didn't fancy leaving town again.

As it was I was confused. The logic for my confusion was unassailable. Lattakia was on the sea side. They even had the requisite palmtrees lining the coast. I couldn't understand why I couldn't find a beach, so I caved into accepting what I'd begun to suspect.

The port, with all its cranes and cargo containers, boats, fences and general port paraphenalia - all of which had been annoyingly placed opposite my hostel - stretched along the entirety of Lattakia's coast, and blocked all access to the sea. Whoever was responsible for the planning of this city obviously didn't care much for sunbathing or sand. Nor did he recognise that he had the power to make the dream real and allow people to have a beer at one of Lattakia's lovely bars before rushing into the sea, as any sane being would want to do in this heat. Why didn't he put the port a bit further up the coast, where there wasn't a town, and fewer would be swimmers like me to frustrate? Very odd.

So I loafed around and had more coffee. Muhammad had lent me an English language academic manual from Damascus University so I read that, much absorbed. If this and other literary works I've browsed are at all representative of Arabic discourse, it seems the Arabic mind shares the Slovak love of the long sentence. Maybe Arabic thought is different when not translated, but in English a full army of subclauses and spiralling devices are employed. Personally I've always rather liked long, windy sentences but I know they're pretty unfashionable in the West.

The prose style, even in translation, was beautiful and hypnotic. It had a gracious subtlety that made me think of the moon, like so much does in Islam. Why that is and how that is I'm not quite sure, but that the crescent is a symbol of Islam must mean I'm not saying anything too controversial.

An overriding sense I get when I read Islamic authors is the presumption of the existence of a shared set of commonly held fundamental perspectives between writer and reader. Relativism, the chaotic multifacetedness of the Western post-modern condition, is not even glimpsed at, not reckoned a remote possibility. Not for Muslims has Thomas Carlyle's Sea of Faith begun to recede. Is this good, is this bad, is the Pope a Catholic, is Mecca the centre of the universe? Am I entitled to say? I see advantages and disadvantages. I see how those elements of Islam which I appreciate can be traced to its resolute defence of the homogeneity of its collective psychic, emotional and spiritual life. People in Islam know who they are, where they come from, where they're going. They know what life means, what death means, how the sun, the sea and the land fit together; they know exactly, in precise detail, what the relationships should be between subjectivity and objectivity, the private and the public, freedom and responsibility, men and woman, Man and God. It used to be like this in the West too, though differently I grant.

This gets to the heart of what I dislike about my own culture. No, not that we have the freedom to criticise and reject the package that those in authority establish for us to understand life and the universe by. On the contrary, I love and adore this freedom. This is why I could never be a Muslim incidentally- since at heart in so many ways I'm wild and anarchic. Just as I hate telling others what to do, I resent receiving commands and instructions I'm not allowed to question.

What I object to about my culture is its lack of any deeply felt set of ideas that can enable people to feel they're part of a transcendent, unified community - and not just individuals set adrift with their friends and families only, in a desparate drive to accumulate wealth and pleasurable experiences for no reason other than that accumulation.

Much can be argued against Islam being such a culture. But it is more of one than ours is. And I'm sure this is why Muslims are so much more friendly to strangers, which they certainly seem to be. A cynic might want to add they're like this only so they call sell us their carpets and other produce, but in my experience it goes deeper than that. It has to do with the fact that as individuals they feel their connection with other individuals more keenly than we do. This I'm sure is because their egos are less well fortified and demarcated. Their belief system, and cultural practice perpetually grounds them as individuals in the context of the larger world and universe. Obviously, Islam is not the only belief system to do this. Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and other traditional systems of collectivist, inter-relational thought do the same - in their own particular ways. But ours does this significantly less so, and that is our sadness. Herein lies our inner emptiness, since as the existentialists correctly say the life of the self is only felt to be truly real, truly vivid, truly substantial in its genuine heartfelt interations with others. The Cartesian identity we've been persuaded to assume, that disemebodied phantom in the mind, which equates subjective thought with ultimate reality, can only lead us away from each other to a panoply of variously diverging privatised mythologies of our own devising. Yes, we can forge workable connections with each other, one universe to another, and we do so; but our unique reliance on linguistic utterances and humour to do so, our energetic search for people with similar interests and ideas, reveals that the connection is something that always has to be fought for, might at any time be lost and isn't just there as a de facto fact.

But that's me being hard on the West. I exclude everything that's wonderful about the utterly vast possibilites for tremendous good our highly individualistic culture allows for. It seems, in our current world system, we're faced with a choice between two options, both of which are imperfect, both of which cry out for synthesis with the other, both of which wait to be surpassed. On the one hand you have, putting it simply, coherence and belonging without individual freedom of behaviour and thought. On the other you have this in reverse.

Anyway, the instincts of defence for my intellectual tradition were raised when I read an article in the academic manual about Muhammad. At the end of this informative, albeit Islamically nuanced, piece about his life, it listed as a study aid a set of questions about what had been written. One question explored the possibility that Muhammad is the greatest man that's ever lived. But whereas in the west, if this question were asked at all, we'd ask something like 'Do you think Muhammad is the greatest man who's ever lived. If so, why?', this question leapt a step and just wanted to know 'Why is Muhammad the greatest man who's ever lived?' In that simple difference, I felt, lay so much about what differentiates us.

In Islam there is a presumption that the universe just is the way it is. Within that, rationality wants to understand how it's the way it is. Asking why might be perilous, however. You'd be examining God's motives which could question the whole construction. In the West we basically haven't got a clue. We just like to ask questions. Muslims know where they are and who they are, even though they might be living in a dream world. We don't know where we are, or even who we are, and satisfy ourselves with the consolation, conceivably very well grounded, that we're the less deceived. Whether that satisfaction is worth the disadvantages of a deracinated, fragmented collective psyche, however, is debatable. Especially since we might be wrong about the non-existence of transcendent truth, even if we're right to question, as I'm sure we are, the certain answers of Islam.

Morality and a Fine View

Aaron and Ahmed took me up a hill to their house for tea and some great sunset views over their sacred land. The women in Lattakia are much less veiled. It was nice to get a smile out of their sister.

Ahmed is soon to get married. He's redecorating his house and saving up. This reminded me of a conversation I had with a man in the ruins of Palmyra. He asked me if I was married. I get this question quite often in the Middle East. I said I wasn't and added for good measure that I didn't have a girlfriend either. I tried to carry this off with dignity, alluding with a chuckle to the liberating advantages singleness brings when contrasted with the formulaic template of togetherness. He smiled, so I think he understood. But who knows, maybe he thought these advantages included lots of free-spirited sex and intimacy with a fulsome repertoire of ladies, in which case he was very much mistaken.

The man at Palmyra was also unmarried. But in his case, from what I could gather, no personal difficulties with forming lasting relationships lay behind his status. I suspect there'd be a higher chance of encountering a Martian in the Islamic world than a man who, Morrisey style, would admit to existential difficulties with getting hitched. For one, this would be far too unmentionably unmacho. For another, it would perilously imply women had a real say in the type of personality they got together with. Finally it would imply, related to this, that matchmaking is a question of free choice, not a matter for parents and families and cool considerations of financial viability.

When I asked him why he wasn't married his response was simple, dramatic and very funny. His English wasn't great, so he mimed with his hands. He said that in England all you have to do, as a man, is buy a ring for your wife's finger (and he mimed putting a ring on his finger). But here, in Syria, you have to buy a ring for most of her fingers, and not just that but also bracelets and necklaces and heaven knows what else. I understood him perfectly and we laughed together against the rock, beneath the sun.

Ahmed wanted to talk about relationships and love in the West. Certainly I was interested to hear a Syrian perspective on the issue. However much his theology might be considered free spirited or novel, this cannot be said for his sexual morality, though when he spoke there was no malice or distemper in his bearing; nothing of that stone age thunderousness one typically associates with the religiously intolerant.

More than anything else it was innocence I discerned. I've seen this quite alot here. In many ways it's rather charming. Sexuality is strikingly absent in the Islamic sphere, in public anyway. This is no shattering revelation. Obviously, I sense this so much, however, because I come from the West. From a West which parades sexuality before the face of the world as if it's the Holy Grail itself, self-sprung from concealment, liberally presented triumphantly for all.

There seems to be two reasons for our Western sexual obsessions. Firstly, we're trying to reclaim sexuality as an integral part of what it means to be human, after having lived through centuries of sex slander under the regimen of shy and brittle neo-platonists, gentlemen we've revered as priests of a God who's always favoured spirit far above matter, despite the fact he's gone to the trouble to create matter. Secondly, we're being exploited by a media and advertising industry that knows all-too-well, at least as much as the priests did, that sex is something we're far from indifferent to, something therefore they'd do well to focus on as they manipulate us into harbouring desires and fascinations for products of the capitalist system that, left to our own devices, we might see through as cheap, tacky and crass, or at the very least not see as the objects of our true hearts desires which we're brainwashed into thinking they are.

Ahmed doesn't believe in sex before marriage. As a twenty two year old I suspect this hasn't been much of a burden for him, especially now that he's marrying soon. I wonder if he lived to be 36 and unmarried, he'd think the same way. That's an interesting thing, isn't it, about the no sex before marriage ruling. In the past people always married young so it was never much of a problem. Obviously, though, since 'God's law' is written in stone, it doesn't make the slightest difference that people now marry later and later, or that life itself changes and is not stone.

Adultery, as well as sex before marriage, is also horrible to Ahmed. He said God will punish it. That it is the worst thing you can do. I suspected he was being rhetorical. I hoped so anyway. Actually, I don't know if adultery is legal in Syria, in the eyes of the secular state. One thinks somehow it should be, if you're thinking in a secular way. But clearly it's unacceptable on the Islamic street. I told him that adultery isn't a crime in the West, though I wished I could tell him when it was legalised, but I didn't know. I didn't defend adultery. My opposition to adultery, and to infidelity for the unmarried, is simply based on the fact that it constitutes a lie, that it's deceitful. People in monogamous relationships say to each other that they'lll be faithful to each other, and they expect that from each other too; or at least they expect it from the other if not from themselves. If they're not going to be faithful, why did they say they would be in the first place.

Certainly I didn't agree that God punishes adultery. I don't understand God as a punisher. Mankind is the punisher, not God. Nature is the punisher, not God. Call it Karma if you will. Karma is the punisher. I agree with the Buddhists in this. But God, who obviously cannot be hurt by anything we do to him, operates outside of the system of retalliation. Moreover, it was to put an end to punishment, according to my theology, that God came to get punished on the cross.

Even though Ahmed had just said that nothing was worse than adultery, he revised his opinion, as I suspected he might, when I asked him about homosexuality. This now became the ultimately bad thing.

What could I say? I could have tried to rile him by referring to what I'd heard, correctly or incorrectly, that homosexuality is not as rare in the Islamic world as one might expect it to be, given the severity of the prohibitions against it. But I was enjoying my tea and their hospitality and didn't want to generate bad vibes. All I really said by way of trying to forge a connection was that I didn't really understand homosexuality. Which is true, I don't.

Ahmed wanted me to stay longer but I was tired. It was fascinating talking to him but I needed to be alone, so I waited for a bus to drive me back the 30km to Lattakia at an absurdly excessive speed.

Morshedi near Lattakia

My train to Lattakia was the first I'd taken since travelling in Bulgaria between Koprivshtsitsa and Veliko Tarnovo. This bus-heavy trajectory had never been my choice but was a reflection of the greater availability of buses in these regions.

So I was looking forward to standing up again and walking around on my means of transport. Hopefully, if the train was better than the Bulgarian one, I'd go to the buffet for a coffee and look longingly, as I like to, over land disappearing behind me. I'd read that the views between Aleppo and Lattakia are really good so this further stoked my anticipation.

Actually, although I found and sat in the buffet, and drank two typically thick coffees, I didn't pay much attention to the views. Instead I spent my time in the immoderately joyful company of Amon Fawsley. I noticed him shortly after sitting down in the buffet, waving me over. Almost from the beginning he interweaved hearty laughter into his discourse - the non-sardonic, golden type that speaks of other realms and warms the heart and provokes similar laughter from others. From me anyway.

A student of law in Aleppo he was on his way home to his village in the hills surrounding Lattakia. He played me a song, quite a trashy one, on his mobile phone. I couldn't help being impressed. My phone is three years old and can do nothing fancy except take uselessly poor pictures. He'd been reading about his studies when I joined him. He has to study legal terminology in English, which I found pretty impressive. He showed me his list of political definitions for concepts such as 'democracy' and 'absolutism', and 'socialism'. Fairly good I thought, accurate, well-balanced, not biased as I expected them to be. Before long he invited me to see his village, even to stay the night if I wanted. I thought why the hell not but told him I wanted to settle into a hotel first. His English wasn't that great but good enough. If all else failed he would revert to his charming catchphrase, uttered with a broad smile: 'I have no money, I have no land, I have no wife, but I have a beautiful life.' I don't know if this is original to him, but I thought it was brilliant. Is this what Alawi Shia Muslims are like, I wondered. Transcendentally happy, all the time. But when I asked him if he was Shia, he shrugged me off amiably and mysteriously said 'only Muslim'. Intriguing.

Eventually I found a suitable hostel run by a Tintin lover called Muhammad. He had a big map on his wall of the expanse of the Islamic world, which I thought conveyed an indeterminate degree of pride in his religion. For the first time on this trip I accepted the offer of a mattress on a roof, and after deflecting his entreaties to visit Saladin's castle made my way to Amon's village.

When I arrived I was treated to tea and a great meal with his extremely hospitable family, sitting under a tree in his garden. So it transpired, all the people in the village are members of his family. But this was not the only strange thing, since the whole village appeared to embrace the same religion too, one I'd never heard of before and have since found no reference to on the internet. I'd define it as a twentieth century, localised, Syrian offshoot of Shia Islam, but that's me categorising. An extremely young revelation, it has yet to find a written expression, so only lives in the oral memories and transmissions of those who personally knew the religion's central figures. The impression I was given, and the one I went away with, was that I was a witness to a religion in a similar phase of incohate development that Christianity went through before the first gospels were compiled.

I'll try and summarise it, as accurately as I can. Amon's father knew the most but his brother, Ahmed, whose English was very good, conveyed the details. They call themselves 'Morshedi' and accept the basic truth of Islam, that Muhammad was sent by God. Within that broad stance, like other shia they also believe that Ali, the fourth Caliph, was a wonderful man, far more than the Caliphs that preceded or followed him. This is where the similarities with Islam end, however.

A major point of departure is over the question of Jesus. It is a regrettably unknown fact that all Muslims accept the providential role of Jesus Christ. But although Muslims will say he was a great prophet, was born of a Virgin, and will return again to the world before the last Judgement, Muslims have always carved a deep line in the sand between themselves and Christians by insisting that Jesus was not divine, that he did not die on the cross, and so in consequence did not rise from the dead.

Ahmed, however, told me that Jesus was the Son of God. Moreover, he did indeed die in the manner Christian tradition says he did. He was right to think that by saying this he would pique my interest. I wondered if he meant he was uniquely divine, as the orthodox say, or divine in a sense that we are all divine, or at least potentially divine, as does panentheism and the New Age. The latter, so he told me, though one must always wonder to what extent western, abstruse theological categories hold water in the Levant. With one stroke he dismantled the traditional Muslim insistence (shared by Judaism) that an unbridgeable abyss separates man and God. Perhaps this was why these Morshedi are all such jolly splendid people. They are not ashamed to revel in their own divinity!

So I asked about the Resurrection, something I tend to think is a crucial article of the faith if the remarkable claims of the uniqueness of the Christian message are to be credited. Yes, this happened too. Really I wondered? I was sceptical. There was something about his spiritualised way of speaking that made me wonder if he was thinking of a spiritual resurrection, in the manner perhaps of the Gnostics.

Yes, I was right. Although I had to struggle to get Ahmed to see the difference between a physical and a spiritual resurrection, he eventually clarified that, yes, Jesus' physical body did not rise from the dead, but only his soul. But what did that matter he maintained? It's the soul that counts, so he said. All of us are eternal and will live on after we die and lose our physical containers. Fair enough, and all well and good, and perhaps he's right, but I was glad to clarify that Morshedi disagrees with orthodox Christian thought on the events of the third day. But never before had I heard Muslims agreeing as much as these did with Christianity.

For Muslims is what they are, at least in their own understanding, whatever other Muslims might think. Ahmed teasingly reproved me for Christians' failure to accept Muhammad as a prophet, as if it was my fault, which I found very funny. He told me how Jesus had prophesied the coming of Muhammad. I told him this was a matter of Muslim opinion, not something that Christians believe, otherwise they'd be Muslims. I think he may have taken the point, but if he did he didn't do so enthusiastically. He was such a lovely man I couldn't get frustrated with his unwillingness to accept that Christians don't accept Muslim accounts of the Christian revelation, as expressed in the Koran; but surely this is vital if Muslims are to understand Christians and do more than just talk at them, however graciously.

Seeking common ground, as is my wont, I asked about Abraham's son Ishmael, the alleged spiritual and ethnic ancestor of the Arabs. He didn't know that he plays a minor role in Genesis, as someone blessed by God who then disappears from a biblical story which then focuses only on the children of his half-brother, Isaac. I wanted to edge towards my tentative hypothesis that whereas the Bible is a book about and for Isaac's children (at least the Old Testament), the Koran, though it refers in some depth to the history of Isaac's children (through Jacob), is intended for Ishmael's, and that through this understanding of the intended readership of the two books, harmony and mutual respect and comprehension between the Abrahamic religions might be established. He seemed to go, very intrigued, with the idea but didn't see, I think, its holistic, hopefully curative consequences.

Morshedi, a specifically Syrian, home grown development, has no more than 400,000 followers. It has had three principal spokesmen. The first was born in 1922 or 1923, I forget. His role was to prepare the way for the second, the most important figure, whose teaching the third individual spent his life promoting among his followers in Northern Syria. Alas, I cannot tell you their names because I can’t remember them and Ahmed said they were too sacred to write down. Both the first and second gentlemen were killed by the Syrian Government, something which didn’t upset Ahmed at all. Indeed, he was keen to stress that Morshedi has no argument with the Government and doesn’t involve itself in politics at all. I’d wondered whether this might be because they live in the prosperous Alawi area of Syria and so share the same Shia background as the Government, but I let that one lie. The second man began preaching as a twenty two year old in the early 50s but could only preach for two years before he was killed by the Government. The third man took up the mantle and lived until 1997, when he mysteriously disappeared. They are willing to accept that he died but say that they don’t know what happened to him.

The message of Morshedi struck me as very agreeable. I hope I get it right. They believe that all people who have good hearts and are loving towards their fellow men are Sons of God. As for the rest these are to be respected and honoured and never mistreated. So wonderfully, they really seem to have transcended the age-old human fascination with dividing people up into intrinsically good and intrinsically bad factions, a fascination we too often maniacally cling to; as well as to have embraced Jesus’ noble doctrine of the love of enemies in the face of persecution. Still, perhaps it helps them specifically that they don’t face persecution, possibly because of their beneficent, tolerant feelings towards others, if not their lack of interest in politics. As to why gentleman one and gentleman two were killed by the authorities, however, this was not explained.

I still wasn’t exactly clear what they thought about Jesus, particularly in terms of the Second Coming. And here things get really strange, as well as divergent not only from Christianity but from Islam. Apparently, although Muslims believe that Jesus is to return, he is to do so not in Jerusalem but in Damascus, and not just anywhere in Damascus but through the ‘Jesus Minaret’ on the south eastern corner of the Great Ummayad Mosque. Curious as such an understanding may be, at least Muslims believe, however, that Jesus is to return literally, in the same physical form he embodied when he was taken up into heaven to escape crucifixion.

Morshedi disagrees with Muslims on both counts. Not in Damascus was Jesus fated to return but rather to their very own sacred region of Lattakia. And not in the same physical form either but in the body of another man (the physical body is not that important in Moshedi, after all). And finally - maybe you’ve guessed this - not in the future is this to happen, but it already has. Sure enough, in the person of gentleman number two! So much for his return being seen by every eye, as the New Testament suggests, but anyway.

One thing, however, Moshedi does agree with Islam about. When Jesus returns (or rather when he did) his role is/was to convert Christians to Islam (or in this case to Morshedi). So there it was all wrapped up and revealed. Ahmed wanted to convert me - a Christian obviously, since I was European - to his super new brand of Islam, and claiming Jesus’ Second Coming for their own was a central tactic in his plan. Ingenious, Sherlock.

Oh well, I shouldn’t be cynical. It’s normal for religions that aren’t Jewish to seek converts so this is hardly a crime; obviously, it was no noxious creed they wanted me to join. They don’t even demand much of your time in ritual worship. Not only do Morshedi Muslims have no mosques, they only gather for collective worship once a year in specially constructed buildings. I'm presuming this is because they have a highly interiorised, direct understanding of God’s relationship with the individual. And when they do gather, they engage in something that has been called a ‘festival of sweets’. I imagine this involves some kind of ritual enjoyment of Syria’s marvellous delicacies, but now I’m only speculating.

A Meeting with Aram

Apart from the souq, Aleppo has an enormous castle, or the ruins of one, sat on the top of a large mound of earth in the centre of the old city, the views from which reminded me very much of Cairo.

One evening with Alfredo, I managed to talk to some French girls who were working with him temporarily. One of them was really gorgeous, though I'm sure I found her more gorgeous than I normally would. If I'd met her in the West, she'd have been only one of a number of lavish ladies - vivid of speech, alluring in appearance - that I might typically meet. But here, in the land of concealment, where mother nature's daughters are shy, she shone like a shepherd moon, like a spring in the desert, an oasis deep with water, surrounded by high class palm trees. The effect was agreeably hypnotic, while it lasted.

Unfortunately nothing developed between us but it was nice to be remineded that half of the human race existed, and had minds of their own. A pity, though, that these women weren't Arabic. Indeed, I have not spoken to a Middle Eastern women since the school teacher near Kahta in Turkey. If I didn't think this was totally normal for the region I'd think it was bizarre.

As long as they're happy, I tell myself. But happy is not what Alfredo suggested Syrian women were when he told me the suicide rate is high in Syria, especially for women.

I'd decided to go next to Lattakia, on the coast. I told myself I wanted to swim in the sea. I also wanted to see the area that Syria's ruling class (or should I say tribe), the Alawi sect, come from. A particular variant of Shia Islam, they constitute a mere 11% of the population but completely dominate political power in the country and have most of its wealth. Given that most of the country are Sunni (74%) and would probably, if you asked them, like to have some of that power themselves, the Alawi have a robust reason to ensure their grip on power doesn't falter. Not only might they lose their pre-eminence if things like democracy had a say, they might face vengeance and reprisals if their hegemony were eroded. Nothing like a solid dose of fear to make the ruling classses twist the knife one last time.

In an internet cafe which like so many boasted computers that intermittently crash because of power cuts, I met an Armenian twenty year old guy called Aram, who worked in the cafe. While we waited for the power to return, he walked me to the station and helped me buy my train ticket to Lattakia. He told me that there are 40,000 Armenians in Aleppo. That sounds like alot but its only 2.1% of Aleppo's population of 1.9 million. He told me, gloomily, that he didn't like the Arabs. Remembering Stephen's good relations with the Assyrians, I asked him if they were any better. Alas, they weren't. The Kurds?....actually they're ok. But didn't the Kurds kill your ancestors I innocently asked, not wanting to turn him into a Kurd basher. Well, ok, yeah, but the Turks (who he hated most of all) were to blame since they told the Kurds to kill the Armenians and to take their land. Through all this chatter I hadn't noticed the tattoo on his arm which said 'Jesus' in bold Gothic font. Are you a Christian I asked, by which I meant are you devout. No, he chuckled, I wear it to annoy the Arabs.

While we waited outside another internet cafe run by his Armenian friend - a cafe also suffering from power failure - I finally noticed the swastica hung around his neck. Wondering, hopefully, if he might possibly be an appreciator of ancient Indian philosopy, I asked him why he was wearing it. Because Hitler was a good man who knew what should be done with the Jews, he said. And what was that, I asked. He killed them 'one by one'. Apparently, he believes (as do many so it seems) that the 11 million Jews of the world control the wealth of the planet's six billion. Curiously enough, however, he later expressed a desire to go to Israel. Examining him on this apparent inconsistency, he said it was fine if the Jews were confined to their own country; it's only a problem if they're elsewhere. If this counted for a form of Zionism (does it?) its a pretty strange form, surely.

Standing up for my own and most people's aversion to the corporal from Linz, I told him that Hitler was an evil man and not anybody I thought anyone should admire. Possibly he was disarmed by the reasonable discursive tone I adopted. In any case, he didn't seem eager to fight for his hero, only pointing at some graffiti on the wall that said 'Hitler rules' (or something like that) next to a scrawled swastica. He said Hitler was aware of racial issues, implying that this was good. I conceded his point that Hitler was very race conscious but added that he was so in a diabolical way that, in fact, had the effect of rendering the whole question of race disreputable and too explosive to be mentioned. So in the long run, was he really a servant of race consciousness? I wasn't implying that race consciousness is good. In fact I find it morally neutral but think that it can be fascinating and insightfula topic, if your heart is a good one. But since Hitler any innocence it might have possessed has been rendered almost inaccessible, in popular western discourse anyway.

He seemed perplexed that I didn't seem to hate anybody, any ethnic group. The feeling of incomprehension was not reciprocated. I find it very easy, given the genocide and the population transfers, to understand why Armenians hate the children of their persecutors, even though I see no nobility in it. I partially explained my tolerant attitudes by saying I'm an Englishman and that we have no natural, serious enemies, never having been invaded, deported or wiped out by another people, being instead a dominant race whose role it has been to give others reasons to hate us. A curious advantage of being a top dog but surely an advantage nevertheless. What we have entertained have been insufferably pompous attitudes of condescending superiority. But we have never, I think, really hated the peoples over whom we have ruled becasue we've had no reason to.

I asked him if he knew Gurdjieff, a fellow Armenian. He hadn't so I told him, patronisingly but with conviction, that he would be a far better man to get enthusiastic about than Hitler. And of course he was Armenian too, so he could conjoin his patriotism with an esteem for his amazing thought too.

The internet cafe I eventually was able to use was attached to an Armenian youth centre, with sports and other recreational facilities. Everything about the place looked affluent. The Armenians also have their own schools and have carved out quite a comfotable niche for themselves. Why was this I asked Aram. Because, he said, unlike the Arabs, Armenians use their heads. Hmmm I thought, but let the matter lie.

He seemed keen to talk further so later we went for some pizza and then for a couple of beers during happy hour at the hyper air-conditioned Sheraton Hotel. Walking in from the heat is an exciting experience, as your body rapidly adjusts to the enveloping wall of cold air. Aram used to be a barman at the Sheraton's 'English bar'. We were also joined by another of his Armenian friends, Magar, who works for an auditing company. The money he said was rubbish, but compared to others he was doing ok. Top jobs in Syria apparently provide you with 400 dollars a month, no more.

We were isolated at the bar and it seemed safe to discuss politics, and they were happy to, though Magar looked around suspiciously at one moment when some people walked behind us.

Magar told me about a Finnish anarchist he'd once befriended in Aleppo who had gone around spray painting on pictures of the President. Worried that the police might associate him with this person's crimes, he confessed that he'd known him to an agent who was a vague acquaintance that he'd known him, but said that he'd only spoken with him and wasn't involved. He presumed the police had been watching him in the first place and he wanted to pre-emptively clear his name. I asked him about the political prison near Palmyra, and he told me about the torture equipment kept there, about one particular device used for stretching the back.

Then Aram said that he expected to be asked by the police the following day what he'd been saying to me. Until now, I'd suspected that I might have been followed, but they put all my doubts to rest. Presuming that their self-preservation instincts would assist them to be quiet, I told them when we spoke about Israel that I'd been there three times. I said that in a demonstrative hush-hushing gesture that I hoped was dramatic. They were shocked and laughed, yet nonetheless seemed impressed. Technically, I suppose, my being in Syria was illegal; though since nobody had asked me if I'd ever been to Israel I hadn't had to lie. They were even more shocked, however, when I told them I'd met someone in a bookshop living in Syria who actually went to Israel fairly often on a second passport by flying out to Greece first.

We exchanged emails and Aram said he'd write to me about what the Police said to him if they approached him, but I haven't heard anything yet. Hopefully, the allure of his beloved computer games have clouded his memory.

Islam with Alfredo

Alfredo knows alot about Islamic law. Like many law books, the one on his table initially looked appealing but after a page or two turned out to be ladened with the same rarified, stultifiying, inhumane jargon one might find in the legal language games of the West. What difference must there really be between the two spheres of Law I wondered.

Ok, in the West you don't get your hand chooped off for stealing, nor do public executions happen, as they still do in Saudi Arabia. In the West, thank God, you can even publically defy the bearded one in the sky, or even deny he exists, without losing your stride or your life. But not so long ago in the West you could be hanged for stealing an apple, so let's not rest too comfortably on our laurels.

In both systems of law the same sense of the sovereignty of an abstract, impersonal, inhumane 'other' is noted. In both systems the Law is a God, second only to the uber-God of all Gods, Money. But don't think I'm an antinomian anarchist, please. In both systems this Law is necessary because human beings (that would be you and I) cannot be trusted to live together, without our egos, in a blissful communion of illimitable love. The Law indeed is an old and sorry story. St.Paul's best efforts to transport us beyond its crushing vigour have apparently failed. Now we seem destined to languish forever, in varying degrees of unquestioning self-righteousness, in the arms of its accusatory zeal. And now, as we get rid of God, we don't even have the counter-weight of divinely instituted mercy to restrain the dark rapacity of dark hearts. A case in point is the so called 'criminal record'. Even though, granted, alot of our punishments are gentler than they were, because of this record, this branding on your soul, after you have been punished, you continue to be punished for a possibly permanent period of time thereafter, unless your conviction is deemed to be 'spent'. Even if it is 'spent', however, your past misdemeanour remains a source of shame you had better keep quiet about. Nobody will be impressed very much if you refer to your past crime, your own guilt, as a reason to be forgiving towards another, on the principle that you too are not 'without sin', as Jesus would put it, and so are not entitled to throw stones.

In case you're wondering, no, I don't have a criminal record. But so what if I did? Well, actually quite alot what, and that's the problem. That's what I'm saying. The unoffical, implicit stigma of the record hangs around like a stain long after the formal operations of state revenge have been exacted and laid to rest.

Probably I could have made quite a good lawyer. My fastidious, categorising mind, might have done well, picking over the bodies of the accused. If I'd become a lawyer, who knows, I might even be earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year by now. Ample money then to finance proper travelling, provided of course I had the energy to do interesting things with my miniscule allowances of holiday.

Actually, despite what I say, I've always found the law interesting, as a theoretical entity, anyway - even though the dead, flattening discourse it wraps itself up in always does its best to shoo me off to more fertile realms.

So I asked Alfredo about Sharia law. Sharia law is often in our newspapers. Its implementation in a state, one might want to say, is the defining characteristic of an Islamist state, as opposed to a state (such as Turkey for example) in which the prevailing cultural consensus is Islamic but which bases itself on a less stringent, less exactling interpretation of Islamic law, usually combined with legal traditions from the non-Islamic world. According to Wikipedia (the possibly trustworthy) unambiguously Sharia states comprise only Saudi Arabia and Iran, though Afghanistan, Libya and Sudan come pretty close. The rest of the Islamic world seems to operate what it calls a 'dual system', which separates the realm of the religious from the secular and has separate courts for each.

The basic question I wanted to put to Alfredo was whether you can dispense with Sharia law on the basis of the Koran, whether you can be a non-Sharia Muslim, or a non-Sharia Islamic state while still being loyal to the Koran?

Obviously, I am no expert. Alfredo basically said you couldn't and no doubt he would have many a Muslim applauding him. What he said was that the Five Pillars of Islam (Praying 5 times a day, giving money to the poor, going to Mecca, believing Muhammad is the Prophet of God, and fasting during Ramadam) are rooted in the Koran. Well, that indeed is no doubt true, but is the Koran identical with Sharia, does the Koran encapsulate the fulness of Sharia? One thinks not. And Wikipedia seems to agree:

'There is no strictly static codified set of laws of sharia. Sharia is more of a system of devising laws, based on the Qur'an (the religious text of Islam), hadith (sayings of Muhammad), ijma, qiyas and centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent.'

I won't go into the details of these exotic sounding words, about which I know little. But it seems to back up what I thought about how there has been much besides the Koran that has determined Sharia. One might want to call that simply history or culture or tradition, the unfolding of minds thinking about legal matters over many centuries, in various contexts.

Why was I thinking along these lines? Because to me, when I think about the Five Pillars of Islam (which are clearly, specifically Koranic) I think: Hmmmm, well, that doesn't sound too harsh, too exacting does it; but that when I think about the minutae of Sharia as an extended regimen, I go a bit giddy. And in my giddiness I think 'Phew, is all this really necessary, is all this really what Muhammad wanted? Are we sure?'

I am not a Muslim and as such you would be right to think this is 'none of my business', as the cliche goes. But the desire to live in a harmonious world in which all people love each other, don't judge one another, and don't heap extraneous burdens on one another under the liberal blessedness of the Sun - this I consider most certainly to be my business. That desire is my business, and I'm not sure why it shouldn't be other people's business too.

Obviously, if people want to live under Sharia and to know from it what they should do in multiple spheres in the privacy of their self-relations and their relations with others, this is their right and they surely have the freedom to do so. Lots of people, after all, join the army and a myriad of non-Islamic cults to get the same existential certainties against the gaping rigours of the void. But surely, it's something else to suppose, if you don't actually want to live like this, that you have to live like this because the creator of the Universe said so unambiguously through both his Archangel Gabriel and human articulator, Muhammad. If you think the latter, it becomes rather important, I would think, to be certain that Sharia is Koranic, and only Koranic, because the Koran is the only unambiguous text detailing that direct, monumental divine message. After all, even the Hadith, the life example and words of the Prophet, are open to interpetations. And additionally, how a man lived hundred of years ago is not the same as the voice of God, I am supposing. The Koran, after all, so it is believed, is the actual word of God, passively received by the mind of Muhammad, undoctored by any contributing, moulding shaping input on his part. Can the same, one might ask, be said for his behaviour?

You would not be misguided if you discerned echoes in my thinking of the Protestant cast of mind in the context of the Christian revelation. That too was rooted in the wonderment: Is all this tradition really what Jesus was about? They concluded no, and I was wondering with Alfredo whether a similar protesting, reforming turn of mind might be actionable within the broad framework of Islam as laid down in the Koran.

Of course, in a broad sense I don't care that much about this personally, since I'm not a Muslim. Alfredo, it seemed, cared even less, preferring to angle for a basic deconstruction of Islamic law altogether, along with the entirety of the religion itself. Such one would expect from an atheist after all, so there's no surprise there.

My concern, actually, is rooted in a curiosity to see if it's possible to reassure Muslims that compromise or negotiation with the 'forms of life' as Wittgenstein would put it, of the non-Islamic world, be that Eastern or Western, is not incompatible with their religion as understood by the Koran. It is after all tricky to liberate people from restrictive forms of life (if indeed they would like to be liberated, and therein may lie the rub) by criticising the foundational axiom -namely God - that underlies the religion that itself enshrines those forms of life. That has been the policy of the essentially materialistic influenecs that have entered the world of Islam in the past few hundred years. These were brought first by the West in its post 'Enlightenment' expansionist bossiness, then later from within the Muslim mind itself they were reproduced, in the secularist-nationalist, even communist-atheistic manifestations of the twentieth century.

I say it's tricky, of course, becuse it gets the believers backs up, since they feel, not without reason, that the most precious thing in their emotional life, namely God, is being marginalised if not less equivocably trashed. And the reaction to that is fundamentalism and the ossification of the mind in defensive forms of rigidity and fear, masquerading as condemnation of the 'other', undertaken in a spirit of self-preservation, of everything except the simplest, most foundational interpretations of Islam. From the earliest days of Wahhabism to contemporary Al-Quaeda, after all, what is fundamentalism if divorced from its fear of the West. I'm not sure that there is such a fundamentalism.

It would be less tricky to reconcile the Islamic mind to expansiveness and a freer interpretation of sanctioned behaviour if the God of Islam is not attacked at all, if one can present the idea that God never wanted all this restrictiveness in the first place. I'm not saying that this is either easy or that it can be done, I am just wondering if it can be done. And if Sharia is indeed extra-Koranic, or post-Koranic, then to my mind this would suggest that it would be more possible than it would otherwise be.

I suppose, broadly, what I think about Islam should be understood in the context of my globalist concern to attempt, however forlornly and hopelessly this may be, to somehow understand what the hell humanity in its relation to transcendent reality has been up to in the past three to four thousand years. I have various ideas, touching on Ancient Israel, Greek philosophy and the meditative spirtualities of the non-Islamic east, and the Christian orthodox and heretical churches. Particularly interesting to me is the significance of the so-called 'Axial Age' of the middle of the first millenium BC, when, as Karen Armstrong and others say, so much changed in the mental, spiritual life of humanity. My suspicion is that the aeon that was then introduced is crumbling all around us today and that this might explain the confusions and disparate, apparently incompatible ideologies of the contemporary world. But until now I've never really thought much about Islam and how it fits in with my working hypothesis.

Of course, it is a relatively very young religion (though you wouldn't catch a devout Muslim saying that, since he'd say Islam is the restoration of the pure Abrahamic faith that Judaism and Christainity were degenerations from). Its only 1,400 years old, after all.

Everything I write is not intended to offend Muslims. But I am interestd in what I read recently about the connection Islam may have with our glistening friend the Moon. Yes, the Moon, the spherical eye of beautiful, solicitous eeiriness that bedecks our sky by night. For one, Islam keeps a lunar calender, as does Judaism for that matter. Maybe they are both somehow lunar. But what I read more than this (and of course what I read could be wrong?) is that the Arabs, including Muhammad, that embraced Islam were formerly Moon worshippers, that the name of their God was 'Al-ilah' (similar to Allah) and that the enjoined practices of that Moon religion bear a striking resemblance to the Five Pillars of Islam. This is either wrong or it is right.

Beyond that I think about Ishmael, the older son of Abraham and the spiritual, if not literal ancestor of the Arabs. Jews and Muslims disagree starkly about who Abraham's most significant son was. Jews say it was Isaac, Muslims Ishamel. Muslims say that Abraham went with Ishamael to Mecca and blessed and made sacred the Kaaba, the rock that is now the most sacred shrine of Islam's most sacred city. Jews don't mention this in their Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament and which they call the Tannakh. This book, in Genesis, writes of Isaac and the promises he received to be a light and a blessing to the world.

What I'm thinking is why can't both accounts be true, even though they're different. Abraham got around, after all, he lived a long time. After all, Genesis is clear that Ishmael was not a bad egg. He himself gets a blessing, even though its not as good as the one that Isaac gets (well, the Bible is a Hebrew text after all).

Ultimately in a way I agree with Alfredo, and with John Lennon: it would be good to see the back of religion, though my argumentation would be different. I'd meditate on the ethical humiliations it has so often wrought on God's sacredness by making him so often an exquisitely partial, bigoted old man in the sky; on the ways in which it has been, yes, and still is far too often, a justification for cruelty and hatred, let alone the prohibiting of the free, joyful life beneath the Sun. But I'm not persuaded the Godlessness is either intellectually viable (God may well exist) or wise (Think Stalin, think Mao, think the tyranny of the machines).

To me it is precisely because God exists that religion is merely temporary. Religion is but a bridge across an abyss, as I have written before. And who needs the bridge when you've got to the other side, or if God has got to yours.