Silk Road Expeditions

Western explorers and archaeologists began expeditions to the deserts of Western China and Central Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The trade routes of the Silk Road once passed through this region and early explorers were hoping to find the artistic and archaeological treasures of prosperous civilizations that used to inhabit this area. Some of these men were semi-independent explorers like Sven Hedin, Sir Aurel Stein, Paul Pelliot, and Albert Von Le Coq who crisscrossed the region and made spectacular discoveries along the early trade route. Most of the artifacts collected by these explorers were brought to foreign countries and were used to build museum collections.
This period is also known as the "Great Game." Great Game refers to the nineteenth century power struggle between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. Russians were interested in getting India and Northwest China. They were gradually moving southward towards British India conquering cities on their way. For their military purposes, Russians dispatched explorers such as Nikolai Przhevalsky to map the region and to gather information. Russians were interested in Central Asia not only as a way to get to India and China but also because the area had enormous mineral potential that could be exploited for the purpose of industrialization of European nations. British also sent their own explorers to survey and map the region. During this period, British were mainly concerned with protecting their most important colony, India. Most of the surveyors and spies were disguised as religious pilgrims or explorers.
In addition to British and Russian, there were other European and even American explorers who made expeditions in the Central Asia. What were the pros and cons of such expeditions. Most of the maps, surveys, travel accounts, and discoveries of these early explorers are still valued for their great contributions to our understanding of lands, animals and botanical specimens, cultures, languages, and religions of the Silk Road. Even the accounts of those who aimed solely to gather information for military purposes contain valuable information about the aforemnetioned things. However, there are many political and economical reasons behind these military expeditions that might not be very moral or acceptable.
How about these explorer's archaeological raids? Were they of any good? Did they have a right to remove precious artifacts from their original place? For instance, should we blame scholars such as Stein or Pelliot for depriving the Chinese of their cultural heritage? Should we blame the Chinese for letting these archaeological raids happen? Maybe we should blame the custodian of Tuan-huang. The answers to these questions are not that simple. Early explorers justified their archaeological raids by asserting that artifacts collected from Silk Road sites could be better preserved in Western Museums. Maybe they were right: they were working during a period when the Chinese government or governments of most of the regions in the Central Asia neither had laws against exporting archaeological objects nor cared about protecting such treasures. Moreover, the detailed accounts that these explorers kept of found manuscripts, wall paintings, and similar artifacts is a great source of information. The question of who should possess, care for, study, and interpret artifacts is a controvercial and politically charged topic. Today, we have stricter ethical rules governing archaeological endeavors. For instance, scholars try not to remove artifacts from their original sites if they can be safely preserved there. Considering the example of Tuan-huang manuscripts and wall paintings, regardless of our opinion about the ethics involved in acquiring them, it appears that they likely had a better chance of being preserved in European museums than being stacked in the walled library hidden in the middle of a cave.

Readings for this week were really thought-provoking. It is interesting how, in the recent years, Muslims have turned into new "Blacks"in the United States and in the West in eneral. Islam has turned into a unitary entity that is associated with violence, international terrorism, misogyny, and oppression of women. This blog post goes really well with my last one. By subsuming all Muslims under the rubric of fundamentalism, we, in the West, ignore the fact that Islam, like many religions, is interwoven with mltiple strands of culture, politics, and history. By doing so, we also choose to ignore the fact that Muslims come from many different ethnic backgrounds and, like many of us, might endorse different ideological and sectarian positions.

The article by Saba Mahmood and Charles Hirschkind really opened my eye to our ignorance in the West. The article was about various feminist groups in the US that started a campaign to condemn the Taliban's brutal treatment of women. Well, what can be wrong with a campaign with such good inent. First, these feminist groups were opposing the restrictions that the Taliban had imposed on Afghan women such as forbidding them to go to school or have jobs, and forcing them to wear a burqa, while ignoring the conditions under which such restrictions were imposed.
Second, Western ideals of freedom were used to judge Afghan women's situation under the Taliban. The problem with this approach was that these campaigners totally ignored the fact that such restrictions only affected a minority of urban women in Afghanistan, while making most women entirely safe from rape and violence. The campaigners also closed their eyes to the fact that the US was for the most part responsible for the plight of Afghan women through channeling US arms to the most extreme Muslim group of Mujahedeen as part of a covert operation to harass the Soviet forces that were occupying Afghanistan in 1979.

Where were these campaigners when their government was giving US dollars to a Muslim group that was led by the most fanatic, extremist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? At that time, US needed these groups to fight its enemies and according to one CIA official in Pakistan, "fanaticts [fought] better." So Afghan women's situation can be seen as a direct result of corrupt US policies. They have turned the region into one of the most heavily armed areas in the world and now these feminist campaigners, instead of worrying about Afghan women's basic needs such as food, safety, shelter and so forth, are fighting for their right to go to school. These campaigners see the veil as a symbol of Muslim women's oppression, but their analysis lacks the understanding that the veil serves different purposes in different contexts. Maybe, it served the purpose of keeping Afghan women safe in the war-torn Afghanistan. Just like not every Muslim is a fanatic, not every woman who chooses to wear the veil is oppressed. What a difficult concept for most of us to understand in the West!!! By banning Muslim girls to wear their headscarves, we are disrespecting their basic right to choose their own clothes. If I have a right to wear my mini skirt, why shouldn't my Muslim sister be able to wear her headscarf? Regarding any group as if all its members are the same leads to ignoring group members' individuality which inevitably leads to discrimination and prejudice.

After reading the articles for this week, I could not help but wonder how similar the faith of Islam was to that of Buddhism. According to the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad is the seal of the prophets. Thus, Muslims believe that the divine message that was brought by him is intended for all humankind. This belief inevitably led to missionary activities. Under Umar ibn al-Khattab (586-644 CE), the Islamic Empire expanded at an unprecedented rate ruling the whole Sassanid Persian Empire and more than two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire. Later, Islam spread to Africa, India, and even China. Just like Buddhism, Islam had to accomodate itself to local cultures in order to survive and attract followers. In the process of spreading, Islam, like Buddhism, influenced various cultures and religions and it aslo was influenced by the religions and customs of its host countries. Islam, like Buddhism, is not a unitary entity: it is interwoven with multiple strands of culture and history. Thus, when we talk about Muslims today, we are talking about a bewildering diversity of languages, ethnic groups, and differing ideological and sectarian positions. To illustrate this diversity, I am posting a link to the Niujie Mosque in Beijing, China, which is a beautiful example of a fusion of Islamic and Chinese cultures.
http://www.essential-architecture.com/CHINA/PEKING/PE-041.htm.

So what led to the equation of Muslims with Arab-terrorists? In his book, Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World, Carl W. Ernst, not only describes the spiritual aspects of Islam, but also describes the challenges that Muslims and scholars of Islam face in the contemporary, post-9/11 era. In his non-fundamentalist approach to understanding Islam, Ernst tries to remove Islam and Muslims from the impassioned political debates and international terrorism. He does not deny the fact that the spiritual Islam that he is introducing often has socio-political agendas. However, he explains that politicized Islam (e.g., the use of Islamic religious language against the West) is not a totality of Islam, nor does it represent the most important aspects of Islam as a religion. Being a Muslim means to submit one's life completely to Allah. Thus, the most important issue for Muslims is to live according to the spiritual values taught in the Qur'an and by the Prophet Muhammad. Ernst contends that such violent, politicized reactions of Muslims should be understood as responses to the historical legacies of colonialism. He reminds the reader that it was not long ago that the religious language was used in the same way by the Christian West in its attempt to justify colonialism and domination. I liked Ernst's attempt to remove Islam from the negative post-9/11 stereotypes. However, how can one separate and try to explain Islam, or any religion, apart from the social, political, and economical situations in which the exist. Well, I guess this is not possible and Ernst himself couldn't avoid getting into politics.