Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State

by Bassam Tibi

The third edition includes a new Part Five on the tensions between Arab nationalism and Islam arising from the crisis of the nation-state and of the de-legitimisation of Pan-Arab regimes. The effects of the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War 1967 and the rise of political Islam in the 1970s are the focus of the new part. The background of the analysis of the impact and function of nationalism and its contribution to social and political change in the Third World, taking the rise of nationalism in the Middle East as a historical example. Professor Tibi concentrates on the period after the First World War, when many Arab intellectuals became disillusioned with Britain and France as a result of the occupation of their countries. One focus of this study are the writings and influence of Sati' al-Husri on Middle Eastern politics. Professor Tibi illustrates the connection between modern Arab nationalism and nineteenth-century German Romantic nationalism, which will be of particular interest to the English reader. Professor Tibi concludes that while nationalism has played a necessary and important role in the movement for national independence in the Middle East, it has since developed into an ideology which seems to obstruct further social and political emancipation. This third edition, brought completely up to date by a substantial new introduction and two new concluding chapters, will be of particular interest to historians and social scientists dealing with nationalism and crises of the nation-state as well as to students of the Middle East and contemporary Islam.

Genres: Middle East, Politics

382 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 1997

Reviews

[Phoenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Notion of Nation Transformed

An extraordinary analysis of the modern roots of Arab nationalism that gives due consideration to regional differences. Tibi's thesis is that the notion of nationhood was imported into the Middle East first from France and then transformed itself into a paradigm based on German romanticism, notably that of Herder and Fichte. As it did to the notions of monarchy in Europe, the rhetoric that accompanied Napoleon's rhetoric in his invasion of the Levant uprooted the doctrine of feudalism by addressing the local population as citizens not subjects. His opponents accepted and used same ideological framework used against them - national self determination. The Dynastic Sovereignty accorded by God to the King/Sultan gave way to Popular Sovereignty of the people as individuals who, in the language of Ernst Renan put aside past historical differences and consented to be governed as if by a daily plebiscite of their will. In contrast the German ideal was of a collective nation, less focused on individualism, that of a people bound together by common language and historic experience.

The first part of the book employs a decidedly Marxist view of nationalism and the state. In the latter part Tibi contrasts al-Husri's secular Pan-Arabism against al-Afghani's Pan-Islamism. Al-Husri doesn't mind Islamism as long as it doesn't conflict with nationalism based on an Arab identity, and Islam is part of it. Al-Afghani sees Islam as not just a religion but a civilization, rejecting the notion of secular law over or equal to Sharia. Over concerns that the Sultan was using pan-Islamism to retain absolute power, al-Afghani stops short of recommending a political union of all Muslims under a renewed caliphate. Whereas al-Husri demands loyalty to the State, al-Afghani requires obedience to Allah.

In practice nationalist ideas vary by region. Almost all of the drive for secular pan-Arabism emerged from Christian Arabs in Syria and Lebanon, one of the best and later examples being the Lebanese writer George Antonius. A secular state would provide them equality where a state based on Islamic law would not. Their Muslim counterparts offer the consolation that life under Islam was the best option for Arab Christians. In the Arabian peninsula, Wahabism takes root in the 18th century, with the POV that the Ottoman rulers had been corrupted from the true path of Islam. Arab leadership was the remedy. By the end of the century they had conquered Mecca, Medina and much of the surrounding territory.

Egypt, nominally Ottoman, the invasion by Napoleon in 1798, its subsequent liberation and rise of Mohammad `Ali divides the country from the rest of the Empire. `Ali and his successor/descendants invest heavily in modernizing the army and industry, which is put to good use not only against the Wahabists to the south east, but also in conquest of the Levant and Sudan. Though considered by most to be an oriental despot, he brought in liberalizing reforms, which in turn after his defeat in the Levant persuaded the Ottomans to offer their own Tanzimat reforms which abolished tax farming and brought in private land sales with the goal of stimulating development. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, on attaining power in 1878, abolished the reforms, dismissed parliament and jailed or hunted down the reformers. The CUP reformers brought them back, but then followed a policy of centralization and Turkification, which betrayed the previous sense of empire as a partnership between co-religionists that nationalism becomes a serious matter of discussion. At the same time, in political terms, WW I begins, and when it ends the great powers take a static picture and draw their own lines.

The result in modern times is a mix of revolutionary Bonapartist dictatorships ranging from Nasser's Egypt to Assad's Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, monarchies which emulate the Sultanate with varying degrees of theocratic governance and tribal conglomerates. Pan-Arabism was declared discredited by the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967. In spite of Nasser's rhetoric there was no development of practical institutions to create a pan-Arab State. Pan-Islamism though weakened by political suppression, remained, an option over the particularism of nationalism, the establishment of a caliphate appealing to a sense of universalist purpose and manifest destiny.

IMV an essential read on the ideas of Arab nationalism, but not as an introduction. The language is often dense at an upper university level and it would be easy to get lost w/o Hitti or Michael Oren's Power, Faith, and Fantasy to provide the historic context. Of a similar nature I'd also recommend Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798 -1939. For the particulars of Lebanon I'd recommend Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions.