In the light of current events, particularly the ‘post 9/11’ debates with much focus on aspects of the ‘clash of civilisation’ thesis, the issue of Islamic identity is a crucial one. Whilst Nietzsche was addressing an audience of a different culture and age, I aim to show that his philosophy can make an important contribution to this ongoing debate.

In achieving these aims, I want to focus on what is considered to be Islam's key paradigms: that of the Qur'an, Muhammad, Medina as the first ‘Islamic state’, and the four ‘Rightly-Guided’ (Rashidun) caliphs. The focus is on these paradigms as they tend to dominate in terms of Islamic identity amongst Islamic revivalist scholars. In that respect, ‘returning’ to Islam in what is perceived as its Golden Age is nothing original nor would be seen by Islamists as unorthodox. However, the originality lies in how one is to approach a study of these paradigms. It is in this respect that, I will argue, Nietzsche's own originality, creativity, psychological, philological and historical insights allows for a fresh and enlightening understanding of the Islamic paradigms within the context of our modern era.

Edward Said's well-known study, Orientalism,² has recounted how images of the Other have often been created to confirm one's own sense of racial and cultural superiority, or to provide justification for the conquest and abuse of other people's territory. From the eighteenth century, when the West was at its economic and military apex, Islam was perceived as, not a threat, but as decadent, irrational, inefficient, lazy, barbaric, false and Satanic. Therefore, the Others became ‘objects’ that were defined not by their own discourses, but by a discourse imposed upon them by the West. The results, of course, were a grossly biased view of Islam that still continues to reverberate in contemporary discourse. Said's later study, Covering Islam,³ provides an incisive account of Western media treatment of Muslims and Islam following the Iran hostage crisis of 1979–80 and it is certainly still not too difficult to detect similar media treatment in the Western press of the twenty-first century. Said's contribution is important for any study of contemporary Islam for it warns us to be wary of making quick judgements within the context of our own Wittgensteinian ‘language game’, as, in the past, much Western understanding of Islam ‘has less to do with the Orient than it does with “our” world’.⁴ However, although Said's concept of Orientalism is more important than a 'straw man’ invented to be knocked down,⁵ there is some justification in Albert Hourani's criticism that Said constructed an ‘ideal type of Orientalist’ and ‘ideal types must be used with care’.⁶ We can, in fact, learn much from Western scholars of Islam from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Albert Hourani noted:

A series of events in the seventeenth century, however, proved to be important turning points in the Western view of Islam. In 1606 the Sultan deigned to treat a European power as an equal by signing a treaty with the Hapsburgs that ended a costly 150-year stalemate on the Danube. In 1683, a quarter of a million Ottoman soldiers besieged Vienna, but the overconfidence and slowness of the Turkish general to press a military advantage allowed the Christians to prepare and gather resources, resulting in the besieging army being routed and chased down the Danube all the way to Belgrade. The sixteen years of war that followed were a series of military disasters for the Ottomans, and at the treaty of Karlowitz, signed in 1699:

Since Islam was perceived as a threat by the West, the Muslim empires have been depicted as vast tyrannies, compared with an enlightened, liberal Europe. As Hegel famously wrote in Reason in History, ‘the Orientals knew only that one is free, the Greeks and Romans that some are free, while we know that all men absolutely, that is, as men, are free’.¹⁵ As the fear of Islam receded to be replaced by patronage, Western commentators, such as Max Weber, perceived the Islamic nations as arbitrary, personalised kingships with inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan was conceived as lacking any kind of moral purpose, other than the pursuit and retention of power. Authority was cruel, inefficient and irrational and based purely upon the ability of the leader to coerce.¹⁶

The rhetoric against the Muslims could fill thousands of pages, but it is sufficient here to cite some of the renowned remarks of Lord Cromer, who was the British consul- general of Egypt from 1882 to 1907. It is typical of the confident conqueror who, despite living and researching amongst a people for fifteen years, still succeeded in presenting a complacent and disparaging picture of the conquered. In his hefty work Modern Egypt, he notes: ‘the want of mental symmetry and precision…is the chief distinguishing feature between the illogical and picturesque East and the logical West’,¹⁷ and further he states that 'somehow or other the Oriental generally acts, speaks and thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European’.¹⁸

The turning point in terms of perceiving Islam was the 1979 Iranian revolution, demonstrating just how politically motivated Islam can be. For the secularising West, a ‘good religion’ is one that keeps itself pretty much separate from political concerns, a ‘bad religion’ is one that is politically motivated. Islam encroaching upon politics is perceived as theocratic and, by implication, totalitarian, xenophobic, backward and illiberal. The Iranian revolution has resulted in Shi'a Islam being labelled ‘bad Islam’ as opposed to what is perceived as the more democratic Sunni. Partly this is due to the presence of a powerful clergy in Shi'a, whereas Sunni Islam does not have such a prevailing religious body. Theoretically, Shi'a political theory is not as totalitarian and anti-democratic as the West might conceive and, historically, many examples of anti- democratic Islamist movements in Sunni countries can be provided. Therefore, Islamic extremism—represented by Shi'a Islam—is regarded as an aberration of orthodox, mainstream Islam, as represented by Sunni Islam.

One might suppose, therefore, that the West would be more prone to work with Sunni Muslims than with what are perceived as radical Shi'a Muslims. Of course, this has not been the case in the past. The West had a very close, longstanding relationship with Iran before the revolution and other examples of Muslim countries that certainly are not within the mainstream can be cited; Saudi Arabia¹⁹ comes to mind. In terms of the West's relationship with Muslim countries it seems to come down to talking to those countries that have power, and those that do not are seen as ‘anti-Western’; regardless of ideology. As Hunter points out:

It was the Persians who first conceived of the world as having a beginning: a cosmic battle between good and evil that will ultimately lead to the end of the world and the Day of Reckoning. Zoroastrianism was a huge influence on Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For these religions, the end to this battle will be due to divine intervention. This denouement has not, of course, happened yet if you are a Christian, Jew or Muslim. However, in Francis Fukuyama's popular and controversial book The End of History and the Last Man,²³ history has already come to an end with the triumph of Western liberal democracies. According to Fukuyama, other ideologies do still exist, of course, but they are no competition for the West and, indeed, it is up to the West to maintain a league of civilised nations to police these non-compliant nations until, eventually, they enter the global community of liberal democracy. Such a proud assumption occasionally takes a battering. With the decline of Communist power it is perhaps understandable that there exists a new-found confidence in Western superiority. However, other ideologies seem reluctant to enter the fold. The Iranian revolution of 1979 was a defining moment in this respect. Why, the West wondered, would a wealthy materialist nation like Iran want to throw it all away and embrace what, in the eyes of many Western commentators, is a backward, totalitarian system of radical Islam?

A point needs to be made as to what the terms ‘Western’ or ‘West’ mean. Political scientist Samuel Huntingdon's well-known article in Foreign Affairs,²⁴ for example, places Japan as ‘West’ and it is not uncommon to take a religion course in ‘Western Religions’, studying Judaism, Christianity and Islam (as opposed to ‘Eastern Religions’ of Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism). Although, generally, we might say that the US and Western Europe are ‘Western’ we must wonder about, for example, Mexico or Turkey; and then we have such apparent anomalies as Australia and New Zealand. Therefore, it cannot be said that ‘West’ is merely a geographical term. Although, in the case of Turkey, the term ‘one foot in the West and one foot in the East’ may be taken as a geographical reference, what is also meant is ideological.

Likewise, one often speaks of ‘Western ideology’ and ‘Western civilisation’ (or Islamic ideology/civilisation) as if the two terms are synonymous. Certainly, Huntingdon's work suggests this. Thus we have ‘Western civilisation’, ‘Islamic civilisation’, ‘Confucian civilisation’ and so on.²⁵ However, this ignores the fact that within any one civilisation there are also cultural and ideological clashes. As already briefly noted, it is not so easy to speak of ‘Western civilisati...