MASONRY AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Paul Rich

University of the Americas-Puebla

and Hoover Institution, Stanford University

There is a profound irony to the relationship between Freemasonry and the Middle East. No world organization owes more to the region in the way of its motifs, its symbols, and its rituals. But no organization in the course of its presence in the Middle East has encountered more criticism, more disapproval, and more outright government persecution.

Both because of Muslim injunctions against Masonry, and because of the suspicions of Middle Eastern regimes about its political purposes, the fraternity has had a twilight existence in Arab world. Often the lodges meet in secret and in fear of their officers being carted off to the police station. A raid on one lodge in Saudi Arabia is described by a Mason in graphic detail:

Individually and as a group, the four Masons were subjected over and

over again to a never-ending interrogation concerning their Masonic

activities. An officer with the rank of major was in charge and

conducted the lengthy, detailed investigation. And all of the materials

seized during the raid on the Masonic Lodge were gathered and pored over

in fine detail. Later on, George Freygang related that the documentation in possession of the secret police before the infamous raid convinced him that the

Saudi Security had "copies of everything" (George's own words) that had been generated by many of the Masons, including a number of phone conversations.

In short, whatever Masonry may be in Europe or North America, it truly is a clandestine organization in much of the Arab world, notwithstanding its public relations efforts elsewhere to achieve a better image. The present situation of Freemasonry in countries where the majority of the population are Muslims is precarious, notwithstanding long efforts to establish a Masonic presence:

The first Lodge erected in the Middle East was established by Scotland

at Aden in 1850. This appears to have been followed by a Lodge in

Palestine about 1873. However, most Masonic development was spawned in

this century, beginning with English Lodges located in Iraq shortly

after the First World War. Unfortunately, the lot of the Craft in the

Middle East has not generally been a happy one. Only in Israel has

Masonry flourished, with that country possessing a regular Grand Lodge.

Outside of Israel very few Lodges remain, with the oldest survivor being

a Scottish Lodge in Jordan, dating from 1925. British-warranted Lodges

that formerly existed in Iraq, South Yemen (Aden), and elsewhere on the

Arabian Peninsula have all been extinguished as the result of political

pressure. A few German-warranted Lodges work in Arabia, having been set

up in only very recent years. However, their longer term future must be

uncertain. In Iran, which has lately had a regular Grand Lodge,

Freemasonry has been destroyed, almost literally, and this occurrence

must rate as one of the greatest tragedies in Masonic history. In short,

in view of the turbulent political and religious situation in the Arab

world, it would appear most unlikely that the Craft will expand in the Middle East in the foreseeable future.

Most Masons would deny that there is any just cause for the animosity or that Masonry conflicts with religious views. Despite being outlawed in Saudi Arabia, the lodge leaders there like to think that their prescence is benign. Many conservative Muslims would be much less charitable. These differing opinions depend partly on interpretation of symbolism. What Masons think is simply fraternal ritual is to some of the deeply religious, Muslim or Christian, a parody of their faith. A Masonic authority comments on the custom of lodges of displaying a version of the Bible on the lodge altar:

The Bible is not displayed on our altars now and has never been for the reason that Masons are required to believe its teachings. We know that there is a very large element of the Craft the world over who do not believe the teachings of the New Testament. We know that many individual Masons do not believe portions of the Old Testament. Hence, unless we are perpetrating a grim mockery, we do not employ the bible as as a profession that we as a Society accept all its teachings and doctrines...Masonry as an organized society does not and has never exacted this belief of its members. It can, therefore, have no other place in our lodges than that of a symbol...It is a symbol of Truth, of Divine Truth, of all Truth, whether drawn from some book of Revelation or from the Great Book of Nature.

Although such a view may seem perfectly innocuous to a secularist, to others it is the height of blasphemy. One critic remarks, "that in order to sell phoney Chanel No.5 on Oxford Street, you would make it look like the real thing. Freemasonry has chaplains, prayers, ceremony, candles, and all the 'trappings' of religion. Beause selling phoney Chanel No.5 is wrong, so is Freemasonry."

The prohibition of Masonry in the Muslim countries of the Middle East is parlty because there are aspects of Masonry which religious people feel verge on mocking their faith. An example of Masonic ritual which offends some, and that shows the gulf between believers and Masons, is the resemblance between the assassination and exhumation of the candidate in the third or Master Mason degree and religious accounts of resurrection. Almost nothing can be said to correct then common interpretation of the third degree that the Mason is saved by Freemasonry, and not by religion.

Recent religious controversies involving Freemasonry such as the Southern Baptist Convention's debate over the issue show that this is a problem that is not limited to Islam. Aspects of Masonic ritual are offensive to several religions. These censures come from such differing groups as Lutherans, Baptists, Mormons, and Eastern Orthodox - and are based on theological objections.

Sometimes Masons feel that blame is being laid on the whole fraternity which should be applied only to some Masonic bodies, such as the allegedly athetistic Grand Orient of France. Of course, attributing to all of Freemasonry the characteristics of one or two bodies is dangerous. There are as many Masonic groups as there are Protestant sects. There are considerble differences between countries and continents. In Latin America the Scottish Rite has been anti-clerical and is very different from other Masonic groups. In the twentieth century, the Scottish Rite has been one of the most popular Masonic degree systems and in many countries, including Great Britain, the United States of America and Canada, is eminently respectable and non-political, or at least non-political in a party sense. That this has not always been the case is evident from a scathing commentary of more than a century ago:

...this Scottish Rite had its origin in the brains and breasts of an apostate Presbyterian, renegade tyrants, Jews who retained nothing of Judaism but its hatred of Christ, associated with Jesuits, conspiring against the liberties of Europe, and for the overthrow of the Government of France! And its first home in this country was the city of Nullification, Secession, and Rebellion; in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1801, where thirteen Jews and three Protestants: Mitchall, Dalcho and Provost, who had received it from France, falsely pretended to found it on constitutions given by Frederick the Great. If Satan had picked the time, the inventors, and home of this Rite he would have doubtless chosen the same.

The suggestion has been made not once, but repeatedly, that Masonry offered a more satisfactory spiritual experience for some men than orthodox religion, and enabled them to be religious while asserting their masculinity. This in fact is a major argument of Professor Mark C. Carnes of Columbia University in his recent (1989) book, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America:

The implicit meanings of the symbols suggest that many men were deeply troubled by the gender bifurcations of Victorian society, which deprived them of a religious experience with which they could identify and of a family environment in which they could freely express nurturing and paternal emotions. The Royal Secret, like all the final degrees, contradicted the assumption that men were innately impure, aggressive, and unemotional. By affirming that men possess traits socially defined as female, the symbols conveyed a message express nowhere else...These ideas and emotions could not be stated publicly. If men had acknowledged that the orders were an alternative form of religion, of family, and of social organization, the forces that had crushed Masonry in the 1820s [the Anti-Masonic hysteria in the United States] might have again besieged the fraternal movement.

Professor Carnes' attractive argument about the lodges offering a sort of bootleg emotionism is suggestive of the problems which religious of many faiths have with Masonry. Moreover, despite what he prposes about the feminine content of the ritual, there is no denying that the lodges in many ways are resolutely masculine institutions: the oaths, penalities, and dramas which are the core of the degrees are anything but feminine. Indeed, the exclusion of women could be taken as evidence that those who joined were as relieved that the feminine side of religion was being left behind as they were that women were excluded. The ceremonies were full of references to hardship and violence rather than to domesticity and family:

Participation in these rituals helped men reconcile the tensions between their upbringing by their mother and their identification with their father's work world, by initiating them, both in actuality and figuratively, into the adult male environment...Leaving the sanctuary of the home for the asylum of the lodge, members chose, if only temporarily, the succor of brotherhood over the comfort of female companionship.

So, in trying to understand why Masonry has not advanced in the Middle East, one need look no further then the problem which also has plagued it in other regions, that it appears to outsiders be a surrogate religion. There is no putting aside the question of Masonry as a religion, and of the possibility that the lodge offers religious experiences which men are reluctant to share publicly.

Nevertheless, Masonry has attemped to grow in the Arab world. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Freemasonry was significant in the Middle East, particularly in the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, Arab tradition was embraced in the search for ritualistic legitimacy: one Masonic authority asserted that the koreish or guardians of the sacred kaaba in Mecca were members!! The implication was that such a responsible task was better intrusted to Masons than to Muslims, although the logic seems fantastic. Understandably such extraordinary claims did not earn Masonry much good will among Muslim faithful. This helps to explain, though it does not excuse, the treatment the Masons have received from some Middle Eastern regimes:

As at 1978, the Grand Lodge of Iran possessed forty three Lodges, and 1,035 members. This year was the last time that the Craft in Iran was heard of in the outside Masonic world. The Islamic Revolution in Iran saw Freemasonry swept away rapidly, and it would appear that a number of Masons suffered execution at its hands. Whether these deaths were occasioned for political or anti-Masonic reasons will probably never be known, and the fate of many Iranian

Masons may equally remain a mystery. One thing is certain, the Craft in

Iran is destroyed.

Ultimately the story of Masonry in the Middle East is a sad one and the influence the order had with the Arabs is problematical: one Victorian-era member waylaid in the desert was spared by a bedouin about to cut off his

finger to acquire his Masonic ring. Asked if he had given the great high-sign, he recounted: "I did not. The fellow may have been a Mason

- there are lodges in Damascus, Aleppo and Baghdad - but he was no brother of mine, for though he left me my ring, he took my watch, my money, my letter of credit and my baggage." Considering the way in which Masonry used Islamic motifs in a secular way, the agrieved traveler was probalby lucky to escape with his life.