The Atlantic recently published an article by Graeme Wood entitled “What ISIS Really Wants.” In it, Wood argues that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the vicious group of Sunni militants that has captured the world’s attention through its knack for barbarity and publicity, is first and foremost a religious institution, drawing ideological sustenance from a well-established millenarian vision.
“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic,” he writes. “Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”
It would be a grave mistake, Wood declares, to elide the mission and tactics of ISIS with better-known terrorist entities such as al-Qaeda. Both are adept at using modern technology to promote their messages abroad. But al-Qaeda is decentralized and almost anarchic, inspired by distant religious ideals and a present need to wreak havoc on the decadent and modern Western world. ISIS, on the other hand, sees paradise within reach. Their goals are land, law, and governance; their venom is directed as much against apostates as against oppressors. ISIS wants to realize a world, today, that is based off of seventh-century Islamic law and custom. Anyone willing to embrace that vision is welcome to join a paradise on earth; anyone looking to resist will know no mercy.
In Timbuktu, one of the 2014 Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language film — which just finished a run at the Criterion on Temple Street — director Abderrahmane Sissako describes a city overtaken and governed by such a militant Islamic regime. Timbuktu sits on the southern edge of the Sahara desert. The city seems preserved in sand and heat, its streets and buildings emerging from the sinuous desert like an organic outgrowth of their surroundings. Against this backdrop, Sissako describes three different communities in tension.
Pulled Apart
The first group is a swarm of Islamic militants, young men wrapped in scarves and heavy artillery, parading through the streets on foot or motorcycle, blaring through megaphones the latest strictures about how music is forbidden and women must wear gloves. These men are recent conquerors trying to make the transition from warfare to governance. But the law they seek to uphold is literally medieval, confusing in its implications for modern ways of life and complex enough to be difficult to grasp by men more used to giving orders about who to kill than about how to live. The soldiers are more comfortable dealing with violations of the law than compliance with it. They know how to finger the guilty and conduct a public stoning, even as they struggle to establish rules for material sustenance and spiritual salvation.
There is a touching and ironic scene early in the film in which a few of these armed men push their way through a mosque, moving from hall to hall lined with sedentary, meditative men. The imam asks these soldiers how they have the audacity to bring weapons — and shoes — into such a holy place.
“But we are doing jihad,” one of the militants responds, almost like a child justifying his playtime.
“I too am doing jihad,” replies the imam. But his jihad is one of moral purification of the self: an internal effort where the tools of salvation are prayer and austerity.
Here we see two different interpretations of Islam, both grounded in the text of the Qu’ran, but diverging wildly in their ramifications — both for the interpreters and the ones on the blunt end of that interpretation.
The second group described in the film are the residents of Timbuktu themselves, the ostensibly conquered who live within the city limits and try to persist in their day-to-day existence, adapting to the rules of their new oppressors when necessary and resisting when adaptation is impossible. They view the new regime as alternately a nuisance, a terror, and a legitimate authority, whose weapons and preaching must be deferred to, even when disagreed with. At a street market, a woman thrusts her hands towards these soldiers, offering her limbs in exchange for peace. God’s will will come to be, she declares, and if she must choose between wearing gloves while selling fish or having no hands at all, she’d rather accept the necessary punishment than endure a rule so humiliating and inane.
In the most beautiful, eerily transcendent scene in the film, a group of boys play soccer on the outskirts of the city. Soccer balls have been outlawed, however, which means that this game orbits around an imaginary center. The boys run from post to post, simulating the motions of the familiar sport, kicking at the air with deftness and concentration, celebrating a goal with an ebullience and joy that are anything but feigned. The reality of the imaginary sport calls to mind the closing scene of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up, in which the protagonist watches two mimes play tennis without rackets or ball.
Both scenes are testaments to what you can see when you are intent on seeing it. In Blow Up, Antonioni questions the integrity of perception when pressed by subjective conviction. In Timbuktu, Sissako demonstrates the vitality and persistence of certain things that bring us together, and the heartbreaking instability in a community when that which binds is slowly pulled apart.
The third group described in Timbuktu are the nomadic herdsmen who live in clusters of tents just outside the city. They are immersed in the desert, but their numbers are dwindling as some join and others are killed by the new Islamic regime. The film’s narrative hinges upon a particular family from this nomadic group, following a young father’s conflict with a neighboring fisherman, and its inadvertent, fatal consequences. This man’s story imbues the film with dramatic tension and personal interest, but it is most compelling when it draws attention to the nascent, violent rule of Timbuktu’s Islamic conquerors.
Some of these rulers are sincere, some conspicuously hypocritical. Some are just angry young men. Some are looking for spiritual salvation. But all are committed to establishing a rule of law founded on medieval precepts, and all find legitimacy for brutality in an imposed interpretation of God’s will. In Timbuktu, Sissako describes a city populated not by caricatures, but by fully realized, contradictory people. He describes a regime and law that is not arbitrary, but grounded in a very specific tradition, albeit in conflict with other interpretations of that tradition. There’s a big difference, Timbuktu shows, between the rules for paradise, declarations of paradise, and the actual living conditions in a city forced to conform to paradise’s law.
Timbuku is currently playing at the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas, 86 Temple St.
