Criticism of the Idea of Arab Nationalism

Consequent Contradictions

The two major contradictions in the idea of Arab nationalism treated in the previous sections render this doctrine vacuous and, in fact, negate its claims both to Arabism and to nationalism, revealing its nature as an ideological tool for the spread of Western influence and for antagonizing Islam. These two contradictions have been reflected in many of the positions and arguments of Arab nationalism graphically illustrating its inadequacy.

I propose now to deal with several of these consequent inconsistencies beginning with an examination of three positions adopted by Arab nationalists and following that with a refutation of three of their most frequently repeated arguments.

Three Arab Nationalist Positions:

1. The Attitude Towards Independence

The Arab nationalist writings place a high value on their independence' slogan. This has been their battle cry against the Uthmani State and it has been raised against the occupying foreign powers in the Arab countries. It is the main element in their political outlook and a constant part of their propaganda. They even raise it against Islamic trends whom they accuse of hankering after the days of the 'Ottoman Yoke' and of scheming to dissolve the cherished Arab independence' in a universal Islamic State.

Arab nationalist definitions of independence are negative in that they consider it as freedom from external domination and influences. Independence does not have a positive content in that doctrine and this is understandable in the light of its use as an instrument of attack upon the Islamic caliphate. It is independence from something but for no alternative. It has no justification other than the mere love, it seems, for a sort of vague liberty. It is not impelled by a desire to institute Islam for instance, in place of the departing foreign influence.

Moreover, independence has always been defined in a superficial way by the Arab nationalist'. It was first defined in mere political terms as the evacuation of foreign armies and native rule. Later on, further elements were added such as non-alignment and the highest ceiling that these definitions have reached of late---and only in response to Western debates on the matter---was to make some noises about economic independence.

Independence with regard to world-view values, attitudes, ideologies, and frame of reference is hardly, if ever, broached in Arab nationalist circles. These circles that have been created by Western thought even in their way of seeing things cannot be expected to push their cherished slogan to its logical conclusion and to its only meaningful usage.The cause of this muddle is in the "First Contradiction" discussed above.

As doctrinaire secularists, the Arab nationalists have rejected Islam as the only possible content of and justification for the call for independence.

They had, or preferred, to fill their ideological vacuum with a Western content, while, at the same time, they had also to maintain the independence' slogan both as raison d'etre and as an element of appeal. This left them in a position in which they were forced to use only the negative, superficial meaning of the term independence', and to shun its deeper implications, which raise the spectre of Islam as the only independence-content for the Arabs.

The Arab nationalist position on this issue is reflected in the practice of those who ruled under the banner of this idea, such as Nasir or the Ba'thists. Their fervently advocated slogans did not prevent them from losing their independence to certain Western powers---including the Soviet Union---for which, some would say, they were no more than clients.

On another level, the nationalist' intellectuals, who call themselves 'Arab', are slavishly dependent on the cultural goods of the West -- including the view and prescriptions of the Westerners about the Arab and Muslim conditions. Arab nationalism failed miserably both in theory and practice to live up to an idea which constituted its essence. The rejection of Islam and the adoption of secularism have been responsible for this.

2. The Position on Palestine

The Arab nationalists have recently coined a phrase which found currency in the Arab media to the effect that Palestine is the central cause of the Arab people'. Their propaganda pictures them as the only defenders of the Palestinian cause. I do not wish to dwell here on the sad and disastrous record of that 'championship' of their chosen cause.Their intellectual failure implied in this slogan is perhaps more interesting.

The establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine is unanimously explained by Arab nationalists as an imperialist plot against the Arab nation, designed to retard Arab unity and to fritter away Arab resources in the struggle with the Zionist enemy'. This explanation fails to account for so many aspects of the question that it can only be deemed of mere propaganda value.

The Arab nationalists cannot explain why the attempts at setting up Israel started when Palestine was still a part of the 'Uthmani State. Instead, it is Sultan 'Abd al-Hamid's rebuff of these attempts that can explain the encouragement given to the idea of Arab nationalism by anti-caliphate, foreign powers at the time (the French in Lebanon, for instance). There was no 'Arab nation' at that time to justify the fiendish imperialist plot but there was rather an 'Islamic nation' to be torn to pieces by the colonial and Zionist schemes in which Arab nationalism itself featured prominently. But this view is, of course, uncomfortable to the nationalists.

More importantly, they cannot explain, let alone come to grips with, the religious nature of the Jewish nationalism which has been planted by their secular Western mentors in Palestine. They have been taught by the West that nationalism is built on material and cultural ties that do not include religion.

In fact, nationalism replaces religion as a locus of allegiance and has priority over it in the life of an individual or a nation. This principle was shattered to pieces before the uncomprehending eyes of the Arab nationalists as they confronted the Israeli case. For here material considerations such as unity of race or original homeland did not exist and the Jewish religion is the constitutive element of the Israeli-'nationalism'. Religious observances and symbols play such a vital part in the state's affairs that it is impossible to deny the essential religious character of Israel.

The only response that the Arab nationalists could bring to this situation was to invent a famous dichotomy distinguishing the Jewish' from the Zionist'. Judaism, it was maintained, is an innocent religion which the secularist-nationalists respect just like any other creed.Zionism, however, was an imperialist movement within Judaism which should be fought in Palestine as the enemy of the Arab people, The massive support of the Jews all over the world for Israel gave the lie to this Arab nationalist argument and in spite of the waning of the Zionist trend inside Israel as time wore on, the state itself grew stronger.

The Zionists were not the only party to share in the setting up and building of Israel. Socialist, communist, and religious parties have enthusiastically joined in this process. The charge of imperialism directed against Israel and its backers rang hollow with the Arabs who saw the Soviet Union and the world communists as well as European leftists, who are the forces of good according to the nationalist propaganda, supporting the new state wholeheartedly, only turning to the Arab side to exploit its defeat in the 1967 war.

The Arab nationalists cannot explain why the imperialists chose to perpetuate their influence in the region through a Jewish state in the religiously significant Palestine rather than through military bases and client rulers or elites. They cannot also explain why Israel was being set up at a time when imperialist powers were already entrenched in the Arab areas that really mattered to them: the Gulf and the Maghrib.Finally, they fail to account for the fact that Israel was, and is, willing to live with all forms of secularist, nationalist regimes in the area but not with an Islamic regime or even a movement.

The establishment of Israel can only be fully understood in the light of designs of the West against the Muslims of the Middle East.The seizure of a land holy to Muslims (Jerusalem, al-Khalil) is an affront to Islam and the setting up of a Jewish entity described as nationalist' was calculated to serve as a Westernization agent and an encouraging example for the cluster of secular nationalisms that were being fostered around Palestine since the beginnings of the present century.

Israel is a phase in the long battle between Islam and Judaism, and if it serves any imperialist purposes it is in the context of the West's attack on Islam and not on an Arab nationalism that did not exist when Israel was first conceived and which itself shares the anti-Islamic nature of the Jewish state.

It is no wonder that the Arab nationalists, who themselves were part of the strategy of confronting Islam, should fail to explain the nature of Israel although it is their chief alleged cause. Both Israel and Arab nationalism have been tools used in the attempt to disintegrate Islam. But the two tools are so different that the theoretical bases of the first demolish those of the second and the second stands in bewilderment before the first. Ironically enough, it is Islam which is the cause of this paradox. Religion is allowed to be a basis of Jewish nationalism -- indeed its only basis -- but it is unnaturally excluded from Arab nationalism.

The nationalists' confusion in this connection was reflected in the scandalous failures with which they met in their management of the conflict with Israel, although they have been in complete control of the largest and strongest Arab countries. Having excluded the Islamic dimension of this conflict, they found themselves thrown back on appealing to the 'nationalist' sentiments of the Arab masses.

But the only sentiments that came out into the open were the 'local' nationalist tendencies, which were not enthusiastic about leaving their own homelands to defend that of the Palestinians. The real sentiments of solidarity that impelled the Arab masses to support the struggle for Palestine were Islamic. The Muslim Brothers, for instance, were the only group in Egypt to fight in Palestine against the Jews, and Islamic motives led the Egyptian people to sympathize with their jihad.

The Arab nationalists refused to draw upon the huge material and moral resources of the Muslim world in their conflict with Israel. This would have led to abandoning their secular principles and would have caused the very disaster their Western backers fear: an Islamic unity and a new caliphate.

They also deliberately isolated themselves from the other causes of the Muslim world. Despite their avowed nationalistic and independent tendencies, however, they found it quite acceptable to attach themselves to certain internationalist movements---the communist, for instance -- to seek help in their predicament, rather than go to the Muslim world. The results are all too clear before our eyes at present as the nationalists are dragged in the mud by American diplomacy from which they expect only a humiliating solution for the crisis they brought about.