8 - 14 February 2001
Issue No.520
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 8 - 14 February 2001 Issue No.520 |
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Out from the impasse?
The Arabs at the Crossroads: Political Identity and Nationalism, H. Khashan, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2000. pp168
From delving into the heart of Lebanon's confessional predicament in a study published a few years ago (Inside the Lebanese Confessional Mind, 1992), Khashan has now moved to a higher level of analysis in his new book, which looks at current Arab politics in somewhat broader terms.
The author opens his book by saying that the Arabs are presently suffering from a severe identity crisis, and the study as a whole is overshadowed by a sense of heavy pessimism that suggests that this crisis, starting in the nineteenth-century, has only become worse since. In the nineteenth-century, the Arab world was linked to the Islamic Ottoman Empire, with which it had identified for almost four centuries. This was a time when Islamic universalism had the upper hand over group particularism, or nationalism. Following the emergence of Arab nationalism as an alternative to the Islamic, universalist identity offered by the Ottomans following the latter's defeat in World War I, however, one Arab defeat followed another. The final nail in the coffin, the author says, came with Arab defeat in the 1967 War. This, in fact, is a key date in Khashan's analysis, and it was after this defeat that the revival of political Islam came about, effectively filling the void left by the defeat of Arab nationalism.
Khashan begins his study with a chapter tracing the historical development of the Arab search for identity, and in his final two chapters he deals consecutively with the symptoms of the current impasse in the Arab world and with proposals for lifting it. In between, Khashan looks at the birth of the nation-state in Europe, as well as in more detail at the path Arab nationalism has taken in the modern history of the Middle East. Such issues as the impact of the creation of the State of Israel, why Arab attempts at development have failed, the implications of the two Gulf wars on the Arab system, and, finally, the resurgence of political Islam in the region are also thoroughly examined.
With the demise of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, pleas for reforming Islam went in parallel with the rise of an Arab national conscience. Western ideas on such subjects were actively sought out. At that time, Arab nationalism was largely directed against Turkish Unionism, and it was pro-Western in character. Despite the fact that Western colonialism in the Arab world in the inter-war period was an obstacle to the full adoption of the western ethos of liberalism and humanism, it was not until the State of Israel was declared in 1948 on the back of Arab defeat that a shift in Arab national aspirations occurred, the newer version of Arab nationalism becoming a radical anti-Western movement.
Political nationalism on the Western model, the author argues, has thus proved maladaptive to the Arab world. The concept of the modern nation state as this emerged in Europe relies on a certain abstract relationship between governor and governed. In the Arab world, on the other hand, certain inherited cultural traits, such as particularism, kinship relations, the presence of competing religious and ethnonationalistic affiliations, are inherent in society, and these mean that the Arab world differs in quite profound ways from the West. Quoting Emerson's definition of a nation as "a community of people brought together by past experiences and future expectations", Khashan offers his interpretation of why state systems in the Third World in general are weak, and therefore why there is a weakness of identification in the Arab world with an already ill-fitted political and state structure.
Khashan's study also looks at the behaviour of the region's political elites in the period under review in a way reminiscent of Malcolm Kerr's classic study The Arab Cold War. For example, in his chapter discussing relations between the Arab world and Israel, the author highlights how Arab dealings with the Palestinians have sometimes been governed by personal ambitions on the part of an elite, citing the policies of King Farouk of Egypt, King Abdullah, Presidents Sadat and Assad as illustrations of how the region's ruling elites have exploited political slogans for the purposes of domestic legitimisation. Similarly, in his examination of the development process in the Arab world, Khashan attributes the maladjustment of Arab political systems to the ill-digested requirements of modernity, and the general failure of political liberalism in the region to the ruling elites' anti-Western inclinations as well to the prevailing political culture.
Army-officer-led regimes, conservative oil-rich monarchies, the cases of Algeria, Yemen and the Lebanon alike all show the fragility of democratisation in the Arab world before socio-political upheaval. The Arab regimes have thus failed, the author says, to move their societies in the direction of genuine democracy, nor have they managed to place them on the right development track.
Khashan considers that the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s confirmed the salience of important variables in the conduct of inter-Arab affairs, variables such as the demise of an inherently defective Arab order on the one hand, and the paramount significance of the West in determining the outcome of regional conflicts on the other. The war in question set personal grudges between leaders before pan-Arabism, the second Gulf War being the culmination of all the ailments described thus far, expressing, as it did, both flagrant Western interventionism and the might of political Islam in the region.
In the absence of genuine political parties in the region, and of an active civil society, religious groups play an important role in co-opting people, and they thus rapidly gain momentum on the popular level, Khashan feels. He sees what he dubs the "Islamic revival" of the last few decades as a "side-effect" of the policies of incompetent local elites as well as a counter-reaction to Western arrogance, though he later abandons the term "revival", preferring to see the rise of political Islam in the region as a reaction to a profound sense of identity crisis. However, the author contends that even though the Islamic groups may gain more influence in the near future, they are nevertheless themselves also out of touch with the reality of contemporary politics.
Summarizing his findings in a chapter entitled "The Arab Impasse," Khashan presents the reader with his diagnosis of the Arab predicament, as well as his proposals by which this may be escaped. These include a need on the part of the Arabs properly "to understand" the West, to believe in Arab nationalism, to define and pursue realistic objectives, to nurture respect for authority and efficiently to manage internal political representation. On the whole, the book is sound and scholarly, avoiding excessive historical narrative, while showing that the author is well in control of his data and how it serves his argument.
Yet, one has the right to be sceptical about some of his more general recommendations. Having pinpointed a causal relationship between autocratic ruling elites and the prevailing impasse, the author's vague proposals for reform nevertheless suggest the continuation of the status quo. Why, one may wonder, would conditions change? Khashan's study may well be different from mainstream American contributions to the current debate on the future of the Arab world, as the author claims it is, but his laboured diagnosis concerning the impact of a "negative political culture" in the Arab world (a fashionable 1960s approach), and his open call for the Arabs to acknowledge that the "West has won," might well be thought to place the author squarely within the ranks of the most dyed-in-the-wool Orientalists.
Many academic studies see the Arab world in direct opposition to the West, implying there is a real confrontation between the two at work. But is this really the case? And, if so, is acknowledging defeat the way out of the current Arab predicament? Can this really be the path the Arabs are to choose now that they are "at the crossroads"?
Reviewed by Shahira Samy
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