18 - 24 October 2001
Issue No.556
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 October 2001 Issue No.556 |
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And us?
Arab but not Muslim, Christian but not Western. What room is there for Arab-Christians when the world divides into two camps? Mariz Tadros seeks an answer
There's one thing the dominant discourses in the West and the Middle East share. They use the terms Arab and Muslim interchangeably. Arab, Muslim: they have become two sides of the same coin. And in the meantime, the mere existence of Arab Christians, who don't fit the stereotype, is forgotten.
In the US, paranoia about Islam has reached such a pitch that anyone who so much as "looks Arab" can be suspected, irrespective of their religion.
Where, then, are Christian Arabs left by Bin Laden's bombast? In their television statements, Bin Laden and his followers have tried to divide the world in two: the Muslims and the non-believers. Bin Laden asked every Muslim to rise to defend the faith. Primarily, of course, he was tarring the US as non- believers, but he also specified "Jews and Crusaders." Suleiman Abu Gaith, Bin Laden's Saudi lieutenant, also described the current battle as a decisive battle between heresy and belief.
Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, argues that Bin Laden appeals because only he has challenged US hegemony at a time when Arabs feel completely disillusioned with a US government which supports without reserve Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his repression of the Palestinians. According to Nafaa, it is not difficult for intellectuals in Egypt to separate Bin Laden's objections to US policy from the apocalyptic terms of his religious discourse. But on a popular level, Nafaa warns, where illiteracy are high, the emotive Islamist references "could quicken sectarian feelings, in cases where they already exist."
Radwa Ashour, a professor at Ain Shams University, objects to Bin Laden's representation of the war as one between Muslims and non-Muslims. "The war is not against Islam or Muslims, it is a war waged by an imperialist power that is asserting its political and economic domination." In her opinion, not only does calling the conflict a religious war misrepresent its true nature, it also causes problems in societies in the Middle East, where Muslims and Christians live together. It will also impede Arab cooperation with progressive movements in rich countries, such as the anti-war and anti-globalisation movements which support people in poor countries. She emphasises the need to secularise debate, especially now, as symbols and slogans are used to reduce issues and force people to identify with one side or the other.
Azmi Bishara, an Arab-Palestinian member of Israel's Knesset, believes that Arab identification with Bin Laden is temporary. "Current discourse reflects the current mood, which is only a passing phase. Many Islamist movements and Muslim Arabs, not just Christians, are not lured by Bin Laden or his ideas. In fact they are against them."
According to Bishara, given that Bin Laden's ideas do not present viable solutions for Arab countries, his popularity will eventually wane. "Once people realise [his way] is a dead end, then they will start to look for alternatives. His current discourse reflects a mood and not a position. This mood should not affect our rationality or moral stand concerning the need to examine our political and social orders, and not to flatter populist sentiments."
Amin Iskander, a Nasserist political activist, also thinks Bin Laden's lure is temporary. "This is not a religious war. People have to realise that this is a war of interests, of American interests in the region, nothing more, nothing less."
Iskander is weary of the divisiveness of discourses premised on the inevitable clash of allegedly mutually hostile religions. He believes Bin Laden's extreme Islamist discourse weakens pan-Arabism. Its negative impact, he pointed out, has already been felt in Egypt. "In the midst of a demonstration that took place in Helwan University following Bin Laden's speech, one demonstrator went up to a female Christian student, slapped her and told her to put her cross away."
Ghassan El-Toweiny, owner and publisher of Lebanon's Al-Nahar newspaper believes Bin Laden's discourse is only legitimate insofar as it expresses Arab anger and revolt against US policy and against the unjust treatment of the Palestinians.
Toweiny argues that Arab identity is not contingent on religion. "Every Christian Arab has an Islamic aspect to his identity, just as every Muslim Arab has a Christian one." He vehemently rejects the idea that Christians may be "less Arab" than Muslims. "We are not vestiges of the crusades. We existed long before. We were Arabs before Islam, Arabs with Islam and Arabs after Islam," he said.
"Our inspiration as Arabs is rooted in El- Nahda, the renaissance of Arab nationalism of the 19th century, that thrived in Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq," he emphasised.
Christians were involved right at the start of the nationalist movement. Alongside Rifa'a El-Tahtawi of Egypt, Khayr El-Din of Tunisia, was the Lebanese Maronite Butrus El- Bustani. Under Ottoman rule, El-Bustani, a Christian, worked hard to raise Arab people's awareness of their Arab heritage through his writings and journal, which he later moved from Beirut to Cairo. In the 1860s Christians also printed several periodicals that served to revive Arabic language and literature: well before the independence project from the Ottoman empire was born.
In 1875, the first organised effort of the Arab national movement came into being in the form of a secret society in Lebanon, composed of both Christians and Muslims. They plastered Beirut with placards calling on the people of Syria to unite. They demanded official Ottoman recognition of the Arabic language. They released manifestos in Baghdad in 1881 as a means to raise political consciousness there. Later on, Christians such as the Syrian Shibli Shumayyil (1850-1917), and Lebanese Farah Antun (1874-1922) also helped develop Arabist consciousness.
One of the first figures to call upon Arabs to secede from the Ottoman empire was the exiled Maronite leader Yusuf Karam. A liberal constitutional monarchy led by an Arab Muslim Sultan was also proposed by Najib Azure as an alternative to the Ottoman empire. His ideas were expressed in the strongest anti- Turkish, pro-Arab terms in the Ligue de la Patrie Arabe, which he founded in Paris in 1904.
Toweiny contrasts a movement that all Arabs can support with one that has no roots in the region. "The image of society presented by Bin Laden and his associates is alien to us," said El-Toweiny, who argues that while Arab nationlists welcome all those who speak out on behalf of Palestine, Bin Laden cannot become a symbol of Arab resistance to Israeli occupation. That task should fall to "Arabs who have led the campaign for the freedom of Palestine, and while we welcome calls from Afghanistan, Indonesia or any other country for the freedom of Palestine, the leadership belongs to the Arabs who have a proven record of struggling for the Palestinians long before Bin Laden came on the scene," he explained.
Figures from modern Arab history well illustrate that the Arab world has a far more nuanced complexion than the reductionist stereotypes suggested by Bin Laden or the Western media. George Habash, for example, established the Arab Nationalist Movement (Haraqet El-Qawmeyoun Al-Arab) in 1952. He later established the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1967. The PFLP fought hard against the occupation of Lebanon in 1982, together with the Lebanese communist and socialist progressive parties. Habash, of course, is Christian.
Not all Arabs are Muslim; not all Arabs, Muslim or Christian, want to ruin the West, rather than talk to it. Bin Laden, and his extreme eschatological Islamic imagery may briefly offer kindling to the mood of a moment. But he does not offer serious, humane alternatives to the polarisation now coming about. That, alas, the world seems in a hurry to forget, as the demagogues shout at each other from across the chasms of hate they have dug.
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