Who are we?

Arabs still don't quite know who they are, writes Dina Ezzat

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First there was the story of the chocolate birthday cake for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presented to her by no less than Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, at the end of extensive talks that covered thorny regional and bilateral issues in the kingdom. Then came the picture of Liz Cheney, US under-secretary of state, with a group of Saudi women covered in the traditional long black cape and headscarf (but with their faces revealed), who were praised by the visiting American official (who is the vice-president's daughter) for their ability to acquire a new life experience.

The stories were prominently featured in the press this week, not just for their news value but because they were somehow connected to the search for identity.

It was not just news from Saudi Arabia -- or for that matter of the social change that is creeping into the ultra-traditional Muslim kingdom. The stories, along with the items and analyses on the deadly bombings that rocked Amman over the weekend, concerned the crisis of identity that the entire Arab world seems to be suffering from today. There was hardly a news story or an opinion article that did not reflect this dispute over identity. Reporters and commentators alike seemed to beg the reader to answer the most perplexing question: what does it mean, or for that matter take, to be an Arab -- not to mention a Muslim Arab -- in the world of today?

To judge by the surprise birthday cake and Cheney's photo, Arabs today need to exert much more effort to be accepted by the West and by Western standards. Calls for closer French-Algerian fraternity made in the Algerian press, in the midst of the Paris riots, because of the marginalisation of French citizens of Arab origin; interviews printed by the Egyptian press with US officials, including Cheney, over the US assessment of the Egyptian parliamentary elections; and opinion articles published in the Sudanese dailies over the need for more persuasive US intervention in settling the dispute in Darfur -- all indicated the same: Arabs need to get closer to the West if they want to be accepted by that part of the world.

Not necessarily so, to judge by the opinion articles in the Syrian press over the "destructive anarchy" that the US is sowing in the Arab region to undermine the Arab identity. And not necessarily so, to judge by the attack launched by the Kuwaiti press against the US ambassador in Kuwait for his remarks on Kuwaiti efforts to combat human trafficking. And certainly not so according to the failed Iraqi suicide bomber whose comments about the Amman blasts were widely featured in the press.

In his opinion piece in the London-based Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat, Mashari Al-Zayedi captured the essence of the conflict of identity. Al-Zayedi argued it was wrong to deny the fact that "there are large segments among Jordanians who are sympathetic with [the blasts' mastermind Abu Mosaab] Al-Zarqawi and an unmistakable trend towards radicalisation among Saudis and other [Arabs] in a clear sign of a profound identity conflict."

The trouble with this conflict is not just about the issue that pressed many Arab commentators this week: Why don't Arabs take a firm and clear stance in rejecting the Amman attacks and all other attacks that target innocent civilians? The identity crisis, to judge by the profound analysis by Al-Hayat, another London Saudi-funded daily, by Raghid Al-Solh, is denying liberalism a fair chance in the Arab world. Answering the question, of the headline of his own article "Does liberalism have a future in the Arab region?" Al-Solh seemed to be saying no.

"There was a set of historic developments that prevented liberalism from reaching the Arab world for five long decades. Today the question is still pending: would liberalism be allowed into the Arab world?"

Al-Solh said he has no good news to offer to Arab advocates of liberalism. After all, he went on, in the minds of so many people, liberalism which was associated in the early decades of the 20th century with Western imperialism, is now associated in the minds of so many people with the renewed wave of colonisation under the pretext of reform.

Will the conflict of identity continue unabated? So it seems -- at least by the impressions offered by Ghassan Charbale, a leading Al-Hayat commentator, that the entire region is falling prey to a state of anxiousness that seems to be eroding all hopes of stability and driving us to the point of an almost inevitable explosion.