Criticism of the Idea of Arab Nationalism

3. the Position Towards Islam =============================

Various hints have already been made about the attitude of Arab nationalist writings towards Islam. That religion's claims to full allegiance to it from the Muslims are rejected. All aspects of Islam that contradict the secularist outlook, such as the Shari'ah, the concepts of jihad or the Islamic State, are interpreted away as mere historical growths that were attached to the body of Islam in 'ages of backwardness.'

Call for Islamic unity or revival are condemned as dangerous deviations from the nationalist path. Islam itself is subjected to various "interpretations" (i.e., revisions and distortions) to prove that it really approves of and even encourages nationalism.

In the process, Islam is turned into what the nationalists call turath (heritage).This turath is viewed by them as a cumbersome corpus of writings, beliefs, attitudes, etc., which has no place in the 'modern world' or in the project of Arab nationalism unless it is 'sifted,' 'purified' and 'reinterpreted' to be ready for use. From what point of view will the turath be sifted, by whom, for what purpose, under what conditions, and what will be left of it, are questions that the nationalists prefer to ignore.

The attitude of Arab nationalism to Islam can be summed up by saying that an intellectual violence is exercised against all aspects of that religion to make it amenable to their secular views of it and to justify its exclusion from the place of prominence in the Arabs' lives in favour of nationalism. Here once more the nationalists fall into contradiction. The natural course would have been for them first to find Islam inadequate or empty of content and then to set about building a social and political creed to replace it, or, at least, to compensate its deficiencies.

On the contrary, the strategy of Arab nationalism was to attack the fullness and validity of Islam and to deny or throw doubt on its programmes so that it can justify its own project or doctrine. This is more like putting the cart before the horse; but it seems that sound logic must give way if "

hitting at Islam is in question.This nationalist attitude towards Islam has revealed itself in yet another contradiction relating to political practice this time. The Arab nationalists show intense jealousy in guarding the 'Arab entity' they carved out of the body of Islam from re-uniting with or reverting once more back to that body.

All political movements that call even for lukewarm and formal cooperation between Muslim Nation-States are scoffed at by the Arab nationalists as reactionary steps which would only hinder the crystallization of the desired Arab entity. Even empty organizations run by some Arab regimes in the field of Islamic action are not acceptable to the Arab nationalists.

However, the nationalists do not show any reservations in linking or even incorporating that precious Arab entity into other international entities or movements not only in the political but in the cultural and economic spheres as well. The majority speak, in the current revival of their thought, about a unified front of all the progressive, freedom-loving forces of the world, which primarily include the Soviet Union and its satellites, in addition to the left in Europe and the other continents. Other Arab nationalists speak of close ties between the 'Arab entity' and western Europe as a cultural and political body that balances the two super-powers.

Some of these speak more specifically about a 'Mediterranean' entity which fuses the Arabs and the southern Europeans in a primarily cultural-economic system. This last variety is now adopted by wide sections of the Arab nationalists and it is flagrantly anti-Arab in its implications of merging the Arab identity into an essentially Western culture. The Egyptian writer Taha Husayn, who first suggested this idea in radical terms in the late thirties, was bitterly criticized by Muslim thinkers for proposing that servile form of Westernization.

On the political front, the Arab nationalists envisage merging their cherished entity into such world movements as that of the non-aligned, the Third World, and the 'South'. These movements are really Western-defined and inspired despite their high-sounding rhetoric about imperialism, a just economic order, etc.

The argument that I am trying to put across here is that while the Arab nationalists do not find any problem in cooperating with or even merging into internationalist movements of every kind, they completely stand against any form of Islamic action even if it were mere window-dressing that does not bear upon the existing nationalist entities.

The reason cannot be that Islamic action relates to a religion while the other world movements are of political or economic nature.The communist or the 'Mediterranean' ideals are redolent of 'belief' and cultural implications; and Islamic action includes 'worldly' fields in its purview. Once again, Arab nationalism faces us with a contradiction that can only be explained by its anti-Islamic stance.