Congratulations to the winner of the graduate section of the Rosemary Hollis Essay Prize: Kelly van Roy!
‘Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first’.
—Charles de Gaulle
In this essay, I explore what factors caused the rise and decline of Arab nationalism in the 20th century Middle East. By Arab nationalism, I mean the political desire to amalgamate into a cohesive Arab state and spurn the term pan-Arabism that Adeed Dawisha (2003) denotes as a Western construct with no clear translation into Arabic. I will cover the historical background and factors leading to Arab nationalism’s rise, followed by the causes for its decline. I will conclude with a short analysis on Arab nationalism’s potential presence in the 2011 Arab Spring. My goal is to illuminate how a movement with great potential for Arab empowerment ultimately failed to leave any lasting effects so that future movements can reflect and learn from this history.
The dawn of Arab nationalism
The first twinklings of Arab nationalism occurred during the Ottoman Empire where Arabs lived as Turkish subjects. The Turks organised rule around local chiefs in a feudal style system, and Arabic was widely spoken and elevated in status because of its role in Islam (Dawisha, 2003). An unfruitful but important resistance movement against the Ottomans occurred in the 1830’s by Muhammad ‘Ali and his son, Ibrahim Pasha, who sought to conquer Syria under a claim of ‘fighting for the Arabs against the Turks’ (Tibi, 1997: 98). This included the Christian Arabs as valid members of this new society, a novel transition from religious to ethnic ties.
After conquering Syria, Ibrahim arrested power from the local lords and systemically centralised and secularised it. He also constructed schools and loosened previous restrictions on Christian missionaries from England, France, Russia and the U.S. to operate freely (Tibi, 1997). While the first two taught in their mother languages, Russian and American missionaries learnt Arabic to appeal to their desired converts and through their new Arabic translation of the Bible and accompanying printing press, sparked a fresh literary renaissance. ‘The revitalisation of Arabic’, writes Tibi, ‘also meant the revitalisation of the national culture, and thus the creation of a new national identity, which pushed religious identity, formerly the substance of Arabs’ loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, into the background’ (1997: 100-1). The newfound consciousness of an Arab identity laid the cultural foundations for Arab nationalism.
This first sprout of Arab consciousness had no objective political agenda. Early reformist writers such as al-Afghani and Rida focused on reviving Islam and therefore thought the Arabs and Turks should cooperate. Hence, it was the Arab Christians that ignited talks of separation, ‘advocating an independent political realm for those whose mother language was Arabic’ (Dawisha, 2003: 25), but their secular voices were dismissed by intellectual Muslim elites who harboured growing fears of the Christian West. Advocates for political separation from the Turks still grew, however, within secret societies like The Young Arab Society (Tibi, 1997). But it took the emergence of uprisings like the Young Turks Movement and the Great Arab Revolt during WWI that alerted the masses to the idea of Arab nationalism previously contained within the elitist circles.
During WWI, Arab nationalism grew as a response against Turkish rule. The Ottoman Empire had joined Germany’s side, but Arabs allied with the British to defeat the Turks. In return for their assistance, the British had assured that they would support the Arab nationalist cause (Milton-Edwards, 2018); after the war, Arab leaders participated in some ‘political debates over the future of the Middle East’ (Dawisha, 2003: 41). But everything changed when the Bolsheviks leaked news of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement to the Turks after the Russian Revolution (Milton-Edwards, 2018). This secret agreement between Britain, France, and imperial Russia to divvy up the Middle East for their own use completely ignored the desires of the Arabs and pushed them into new boundaries that ignored ethnic and tribal lines. It denied notable Arab leaders like the Hashemites of Hijaz and extoled nationalists in Damascus the chance to expand their territories on their own through some forged commonality (Khashan, 2000).
This betrayal of the Western powers burned itself into the collective psyche of the Arabs who immediately became anti-Western. Resentment grew with the reveal of the ‘Balfour Declaration and the French army’s destruction of Arab rule in Damascus in July 1920’ (Khashan, 2000: 35). Arab nationalism transformed ‘from seekers of unity’ after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire ‘into activists merely preoccupied with the pursuit of independence for the territorial units created by the architects of SykesPicot’ (ibid.), including the eradication of Israel. Where Arab nationalism could have been a movement for regional expansion and exploration, it had become a reactionary aggression against colonial powers’ interference in the region.
The actual ideology behind Arab nationalism was developed by the writings of Sati al-Husri. As Dawisha (2003) explains, al-Husri drew his ideas of Arab nationalism from the German concepts of the nation and state as opposed to that of Britain and France. The intellectual reasoning of the latter two centred on an understanding that the state creates the nation and therefore the two are virtually inseparable. The German conception deemed that ‘nations were not political constructs but cultural creations’; therefore nations ‘predate the state, their beginnings planted in a remote, even immemorial, past in the form of an original tribe or an original linguistic community’ (2003: 52).
Al-Husri capitalised on the role of shared language and history in his formulation of Arab nationalism. Until his writings, Arabs were understood as the Asiatic peoples living within the Ottoman Empire, but al-Husri extended the meaning to include all Arabic-speakers, stretching the boundaries toward Egypt and Northern Africa (Tibi, 1997). This also included the Arab Christians because al-Husri did not consider religion as strong of a unifying factor as compared to culture. Hence, he developed a secular nationalism that he imposed within schools (Dawisha, 2003). Through the work of al-Husri, the intellectually newly defined Arab nationalism was ready to challenge the European colonisers and forge a unified world.
The dusk of Arab nationalism
The heyday of Arab nationalism found its knight in Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who embodied the concepts of Arab unification within his foreign policies and appealed to the masses with overpowering charisma. The ideal of a united Arab state seemed almost tangible with Egypt’s and Syria’s synthesis into the United Arab Republic (UAR), but this only meant that the new state’s failure to persist held greater potential for damage. (Dawisha, 2003). Before it could collapse however, Egypt’s overwhelming defeat and territorial loss against Israel’s surprise air attack in the Six Day War of 1967, dealt a tragic blow to Nasser’s prophetic status first, and without him, any hope for a greater Arab state (ibid.). After the war, his character grew more placatory, and people began to distance themselves from his aspirations.
How did Arab nationalism start to collapse based on the political failures of one man? One underlying cause rested in its ideological origins. From its inception, Arab nationalism had been a product of elitist groups educated in Europe who had no political authority and differing ideas of nationalist tactics. They ultimately ‘failed to enlist uninterrupted grassroots support in Arab societies’ (Khashan, 2000: 42). Even the precepts in al-Husri’s interpretation of Arab nationalism carried structural limitations. In basing his conception of nationalism on the Germanic origin, he mirrored its goal: to consolidate the nation. This meant that ideas of ‘liberty or freedom were distractions, and when they contradicted the national will, they had to be repressed’ (Dawisha, 2003: 298). With only unification in mind, al-Husri neglected to construct of what kind of government should rule such a unified state. In this light, the entire premise of Arab nationalism appears to be an impractical utopia.
The most solid aspect of Arab nationalism stemmed from its goal of liberation. So what happens to Arab nationalism if it loses this antagonism? Fouad Ajami writing in 1978 relates the nature of the relationships between Britain and France and the Middle East, who were so justifiably traumatised by their betrayal approximately thirty years prior. Intervention from Britain had subsided after the Suez Canal rift and the
British, once resented and admired masters, now covet Arab investments and worry about the penetration of their society by Arab capital. France has become synonymous with Charles de Gaulle: an admired symbol of nationalism and, from 1962 onward, a ‘friend’ of the Arab states (Ajami, 1978: 366).
With hostile relationships slowly dwindling, the original causes for Arab unity floated further away. Even the rallying cry for the liberation of Palestine and accompanying animosity toward Israel received its first reconciliation with the Arab world due to the efforts of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978. The issue, says Ajami, ‘is no longer about Israel’s existence, but about its boundaries’ (1978: 368).
Sadat’s decision to make peace with Israel accentuated another cause for Arab nationalism’s decline: a focus on individual states. Even before the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire, arousing a sense of Arab identity proved difficult with other identities to families, tribes and religion. After the establishment of states, regimes had to cultivate their own laws, national symbols, and localities and, in order to consolidate their realms, appealed to new statist Arab identities that would prove to be another contender against the goal of Arab nationalism (Owen, 2004). The 1970’s to 1980’s saw an expansion of state-based nationalism on account of changing power dynamics and relative political durability. With the loss of military prowess from Egypt came new powerhouses in the form of oil-rich Saudi Arabia and a unified Syria under President Assad. Their influence plus the existence of many newly independent Arab states diffused power further away from a unified ideal. In addition, throughout this time, no other Arab state government experienced a forceful change of power like the wanton coups of the 1950s and 1960s, proving the increasing levels of state power and control (Owen, 2004).
Even more than the state, Islam, specifically radical Islam, served as Arab nationalism’s main competitor. Although the two are similar, their relationship was ultimately hostile because of Arab nationalism’s secular nature. Arab nationalists like al-Husri and Nasser acknowledged the importance of Islam within their movements but only adopted those parts which were spiritual or moral. As Dawisha conveys, ‘They resolutely rejected Islam’s political and constitutional implications, and insisted on its complete subordination to Arab nationalism’ (2003: 296), which obviously read as blasphemy to radical Islamic groups. Secular nationalists soon became the targets of jihad. While Islamic radicals did operate during the 1950’s and 1960’s with low potency, activity skyrocketed after the catastrophe of 1967. For the next three decades, radicals would threaten the secular Arab governments and steal any remaining limelight from Arab nationalism (Dawisha, 2003).
Conclusion
When faced with the viewpoint that Arab nationalism has declined, the following question is, has it vanished? The Arab Spring in 2011 proposed a potential resurgence of Arab nationalism. Milton-Edwards comments on how the event ‘revived distinctly civic, national ideals and beliefs that had more in common with conceptions of Arab identity than Islamism’ (2018: 86). However, Arab identity equates only to Arabism and not Arab nationalism. In his analysis of the Arab Spring, Dawisha finds no trace of the unification movement that shone the previous century, saying the people’s demands ‘were directed at a fundamental reform of the institutions, policies, and values of the state’ (2003: 319). Caught between the state on side and political and radical Islam on the other, Dawisha argues that the proof of Arab nationalism’s disappearance is the lack of advocates for its potential as a solution to either rampant state corruption or jihadi militarists. The sun on Arab nationalism has set, and it is time for a new ideology to form and empower the forged states of the Middle East. And hopefully what is coming is better than what is gone.
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