In the Name of Identity

I know I promised a review of Dogs and Demons but I think that’ll take a little longer to put together so instead I’ll focus on another book I finished recently, Amin Maalouf’s In the Name of Identity.

This is the first book I’ve read by Maalouf, better known in the English-speaking world as a writer of fiction. Originally from Lebanon, Maalouf emigrated to France and has lived there for over two decades. In the Name of Identity is a book he wrote in response to questions of nationality and affiliation which he has had to deal with growing up in Lebanon and then upon living in France and which he saw increasingly in the world around him. It was published in 1996 and was translated from the French in 2000. It was only really discovered by the English-speaking media after the September 11 attacks and was latched onto by some for the explanation it offered as to why barbaric acts of terrorism are perpetrated around the world.

I have to say the book immediately grabbed me. Dogs and Demons was a book I wanted every Japanese person to read but In the Name of Identity is something I want everyone to read. Maalouf has a lucidity that grips you as soon as your eyes hit the page. He speaks in a conversational tone, asking questions, offering insights and all the time methodically developing his ideas about identity, which, as the title would suggest, is the central preoccupation of the book. Maalouf raises questions about how identity is constructed, how it is viewed and its subsequent effect on people’s actions as he develops a powerful argument that massacres and bloodshed between peoples almost always arise out of a threat (or, at the very least, perceived threat) to identity.

Although written before the spate of books attacking religion and not explicity intended as such, Maalouf delivers a rebuke to the Richard Dawkins’s of the world that would have religion cast as the root of all evil. Religion certainly plays its part in some of the worst atrocities mankind has commited, this is undeniable, but in understanding why some devout believers are motivated to kill while other, equally devout, sacrifice their lives to help others Dawkins, Hitchens and others on the God-is-bad bandwagon can offer no convincing explanation. Maalouf’s identity-centric understanding on the other hand neatly reconciles the apparent incongruity.

Where In the Name of Identity falls down, though, is when it verges into the specific. Maalouf’s words sound good phrased generally, and really at about 160 pages the book is intended as no more than an introduction, but when it he attempts to offer suggestions for how they can be put into practice they only raise more questions rather than provide answers. He spends a great deal of time talking about the importance of allowing people to embrace all the components of their identities and tempers this by saying that this cultural freedom cannot be used as an excuse to impinge upon universal human rights. But as anyone who has looked at the question of human rights can tell you straightaway there is little consensus on what human rights are universal. If we assume the civil and political rights that Western countries generally strive to uphold are what Maalouf means then doesn’t this necessarily mean that at some point Western cultural norms triumph over others? Something that Maalouf seems to suggest reciprocity can help solve (without actually explaining how this would happen).

Still, I don’t want to spend too much time criticising Maalouf because regardless of these problems the book still stands as an excellent call-to-arms for all those who want to be able to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems without resorting to simple slogans, invasion and armed conflict. While in specific application, Maalouf’s theory might leave something to be desired, any limitations only serve as a motivation to continue the conversation he has begun.