Banning Chess, Coffee, Tobacco -- and Legitimacy

The New York Times published an article today entitled: “Saudi Arabia’s Top Cleric Forbids Chess, but Players Maneuver”:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/middleeast/saudi-arabias-top-cleric-forbids-chess-but-players-maneuver.html?_r=0

To summarize: the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia recently issued a fatwa declaring that the game of chess was forbidden, saying that it was "the work of Satan," like alcohol and gambling, and a waste of time and money that creates hatred between players. The response from Saudi chess players indicates that the fatwa will be as effective and command the same obedience that similar bans on coffee and tobacco did centuries ago.

By way of background, early forms of chess were developed in India and made their way to Persia in the 7th century – just in time for it to be adopted when the Muslim Arabs conquered Persia. Unlike most of the areas conquered by the Muslim Arabs in their initial conquests, the Persians were not assimilated by their Arab rulers but retained their Persian identity and language (although they did adopt many aspects of Arab civilization and culture, notably the Arabic alphabet, which they modified for their own use).

In one of the unintended consequences of the Arab conquest of Persia, the Persians also eventually largely adopted their own form of Islam – Shi’ism – which has been in opposition, more or less over the centuries, to the majority Sunni form of Islam.

I’m going to skip over a lot of history now. That includes the fact that the Abbasid Empire, centered in Baghdad during the Middle Ages (and primarily known in the West for the legendary glories of the reign of Caliph Harun Al-Rashid and the 1001 Nights), was founded by Persian Shi’ites who overthrew the first Arab Muslim empire – the Umayyad Empire, whose capital was in Damascus – although the Abbasid Empire eventually became very orthodox Sunni. My point here – and I’m greatly simplifying – is that there is a long-standing rivalry and competition between the Arab Muslims (and later the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which conquered and absorbed the Arab lands) and the Persian Muslims that dates back to the first centuries of Islam. This rivalry and animosity contributed to periodic wars between the Arabs and Turks, on the one hand, and the Persians (or Iranians) on the other hand. The animosity is reflected in the Arabic and Persian languages by their respective synonyms for Arabs and Persians which mean barbarian, uncivilized, uncultured, uncouth, ill-spoken, illiterate, etc.

For example, some of you may remember the late Professor Fouad Ajami, who taught at Johns Hopkins University, and who was frequently on TV and published numerous articles and books. A Shi’ite Arab originally from Lebanon, his family name in Arabic means “Persian” and, in fact, his family originally migrated to the part of Syria now known as Lebanon around six centuries ago. Despite their centuries-long residence in Syria and the complete Arabization of his family, Professor Ajami was the target of many insults over the years by Arab intellectuals who didn’t like (or loathed) his political views and theories (he frequently criticized and skewered Arab intellectuals and Arab politics and he later supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq). Some of those “intellectuals” took particular aim at the “fact” that he wasn’t even a “real Arab,” as "evidenced" by his name – and therefore he had no right or justification (or worse, he had “hidden” motives) for his criticisms. Long before Professor Ajami became identified with the George W. Bush administration, these Arab intellectuals and semi-intellectuals justified their animosity, in part, on the fact that `ajami, in Arabic, means Persian, barbarian, uncivilized, uncultured, etc.

Love or loath him – so much for cool and reasoned academic objectivity and contemplation.

In any case, the current dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran has very deep roots. And one has to look at the Saudi Grand Mufti’s ban on the “Persian” game of chess as part of that dispute. (The term “checkmate” comes from the Persian “shah mat,” which means the “king is dead.” Note, on the other hand, that “mat” is an Arabic word.)

HOWEVER – and this is my point, however much I meandered in getting to it – the Saudi Grand Mufti’s ban on chess will most certainly end up in the garbage heap with similar bans on coffee and tobacco that Muslim theologians tried to impose back in the Middle Ages after coffee was introduced from Africa, and later tobacco was introduced from America. Because of their stimulative and addictive properties, the theologians concluded that coffee and tobacco were analogous to alcohol and therefore were forbidden (although not even mentioned in the Quran).

Anyone who has been in Muslim countries, particularly in Arab countries, can see that these bans were completely ignored. Moreover, since alcohol is forbidden under Islam (and public consumption is generally banned or illegal), the huge numbers of coffee houses in Arab countries fulfill the same social and cultural functions that pubs, taverns, and bars do in Western countries – with caffeine and nicotine replacing alcohol. The ISIS rulers have also banned cigarettes as anti-Islamic (and are reportedly having as much success at enforcing the ban as their medieval predecessors since smuggled cigarettes are much in demand in the territories controlled by ISIS).

This raises another point – that despite the inflexibility and conservatism of religious leaders, sometimes they are just ignored on issues small, and sometimes large. Moreover, we too often have the tendency to think – even demand – that the members of a religion MUST belong to the most extreme form of that religion,  e.g., all Christians must be fundamentalist evangelicals, all Jews must be ultra-Orthodox Hasids or Satmars, and all Muslims must be followers of ISIS and the Taliban – and those who aren’t or don’t are either not true Christians, or true Jews, or true Muslims – or they’re lying.

When we accept the definitions of extremists as being the only legitimate or true definitions – then are we not actually giving them aid and comfort and legitimacy?