“What is life without honor?” This is a question posed recently by the daughter of the Sultan Jamalul Kiram III of the southern Philippine province of Sulu in response to the refusal of her uncle to leave a small part of Malaysia that her uncle had invaded with his Filipino followers and refuses to leave. The “Royal Sulu Army” claims to have documents from the 1800s stating that this territory belongs to their clan. However, the government of the Philippines has condemned the act and ordered its citizens to return.
The idea that land claims trump the value of human life has a long and well documented history worldwide. When Spanish conquistadores claimed the “New World” for the king and queen of Spain by reading out a 1513 Requerimiento, the locals (would they have been able to understand Spanish usually read from the deck of a galleon) were informed that the Pope had give all the territories taken by the sword as now belonging to Spain. I recently participated in a conference on Imperium and Officium in Vienna in which the case studies presented noted that land was claimed and documented from the third dynasty of Ur through the Neo-Assyrian, Achaemenid, Ptolemaic, Roman and early Islamic era. Even for land-grabbing tyrants of the past it seems that it was not enough to spill the blood of enemies on the soil; a textual proof of purchase sealed the raw deal.
What does it really mean to “own” land? If this is meant in terms of the land that can be charted on a map, then it is well to remember the words of J.Z. Smith that map is not territory. Legend has it that Crazy Horse refused to sign a treaty ceding land to the U.S. government because the land is one’s mother and one does not sell his mother. Little did he know that men without honor will even do that. So who owns the land where Abraham journeyed, Jacob wrestled an angel, Joshua invaded, Solomon lusted for Bathsheba, Sennacherib besieged, John the Baptist ate wild honey, Jesus wept, the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple, the caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock, the crusaders turned a mosque into a stable, the British liberated from the Ottomans to forge an ill-fated mandate, Israel was reborn, tourists still inundate and bombs blow to bits civilians? Was it God? If so, which one and does he still have the deed to prove it?
What is life without honor? One should add to this a second and perhaps more relevant question: what is death with or without honor? Since the Arab Spring toppled several dictators, the fighting has come to the extent of large scale slaughter in Syria, where the last dictator standing is tottering. Syrians have learned that owning land in the eyes of a government is meaningless when tanks fire volleys and planes strafe business districts. The death toll in Syria now is estimated at 70,000 with several hundred thousand refugees having fled their homes. Some of those fighting in Syria believe that the land belongs to the people, but there are also those fighting who say both the land and the souls of the people belong to God. In either case the soil is likely to be drenched with blood even after the dictator falls.
In direct answer to the sultan’s daughter, I have a simple suggestion: life without honor is better than death due to someone else’s idea of what honor is. No individual ever really owns land; the land owns and outlasts us. That holy land parcel we call Jerusalem has endured every claim made to it. History suggests that there will be new temporary owners in the future and that the blood count tally of those killed in disputing ownership will not abate. I find no honor in killing over issues of assumed honor, only the same horror felt by those who suffered from before and after the third dynasty of Ur. Would that Crazy Horse were here today to remind us that our mother is bleeding to death and we have yet to fully own up to it.
Daniel Martin Varisco is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle Eastern Studies at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Since 1978 he has conducted ethnographic and historical research in Yemen, Egypt and Qatar. His latest book is Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (University of Washington Press, 2007). He currently serves as editor of Contemporary Islam and Editor-in-Chief of CyberOrient (www.cyberorient.net), the online journal of the Middle East Section of the AAA. His regular blog is Tabsir: Insight on Islam and the Middle East (www.tabsir.net).