Before we can properly examine the
clash between Arab Nationalism and modernity, it is important for us to have a
clear understanding of what Arab Nationalism is and what it entails. Webster’s dictionary defines nationalism
as “a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and
placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed
to those of other nations or supranational groups”. The Oxford dictionary defines it as “The belief that nations will
benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing
national rather than international goals”. By using those two definitions as
the foundation of our understanding we can deduce then that Arab Nationalism is
essentially the unity of Arab’s to form one ideological nation for the purpose
of improving the lives of Arab’s, protecting Arab culture, and championing Arab
interests. This ideological nation that is formed transcends the territorial
boundaries that were formed by colonialism and calls for the unity of Arabic
people in the geographically neighbouring areas from North Africa, the
Middle-East, and the Persian Gulf. This aspect of Arab nationalism is touched
on by Dashiwa when he states “Arab nationalism shares traits with other
nationalistic movements, but there is one basic difference: it is not the
ideology of one nation-state, but of the entire region” (Dashiwa, 2002: 1). The
purpose of the creation of Arab Nationalism was to address the regeneration of
Arab self-confidence and sense of dignity after long years of subjugation to
colonial rule (Shlaim, 2003).
Another aspect that strengthens Arab
Nationalism is the fact that it what binds it together is the common religion
of Islam, which is followed the great majority of the citizens in the Arab
region of the world. To fully appreciate the clashes of Arab Nationalism with
the concept of modernity, one must grasp an understanding of the significance
and sacredness of Islam to Arab Muslims who are dealing with the daily
resultants of modernity. Lewis (1993) explains the link between Arab
Nationalism and Islam by saying:
“For Muslims the two forms of
expression [national and religious] were never really distinguished. The basic
sentiment of identity was religious and social, the complete society of Islam
was expressed sometimes in national, sometimes in religious terms as synonymous
and interchangeable sets of words denoting the same basic reality”
For the purpose of this essay and by
using knowledge gained from the above explanation, we will also consider the
problems between Islam and modernity as being interchangeable with the problems
between Arab Nationalism and modernity. The Arabic ties to Islam are so strong
that when Arab’s fought for their independence and revolted against the Ottoman
Empire in 1916, they used Islam as the guiding principle. “Religious identity
was more important than national identity. The Arab revolt therefore ought to
be excised from the chronicles of Arab nationalism” (Dashiwa, 2002). The two
beliefs (Arab Nationalism & Islam) are said to complement each other so
well that one system of belief is automatically put forward as the substitute
value system if the other meets frustration. For many, Islam is the seed of
Arab Nationalism and so it is near impossible to talk about one without
mentioning the other. Weijian (2007) explains this dynamic with the following
statement:
“Islam is a kind of national religion; its inner core being Arabic.
The Prophet was an Arab, the language used in the revelation from the Koran is
Arabic, and Islam retains many customs of the Arabs. Therefore, ‘notwithstanding
its universality, Islam had an inner appeal to the Arabs and, through its
language, formed the core of Arab nationalism.’”
This gives us further proof that Islam
goes hand-in-hand with Arab Nationalism although it must be noted that not all
Muslims are Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslim. This discussion will not make
the make the mistake of not noting the distinction but will only deal with the
issues that parallel between the religion and the ideology.
Modernity is a way of thought or living
that comes about as a result of modernization. The Oxford Dictionary defines modernisation as to “adapt (something)
to modern needs or habits, typically by installing modern equipment or adopting
modern ideas or methods” and then further goes on to define modernity as “the quality or
condition of being modern” or “a modern way of thinking, working, etc.;
contemporariness”. We live in a world where modernization is constantly
spreading and a lot of the innovations
of modernity seemingly come from the West so what must be noted is that along
with modernization, comes cultural fragmentation because it changes the way we
do things and we essentially become more “Westernised” along with being “modernized”. With that in
mind, it is important to question the integrity of modernity due to the fact
that it requires many non-Western groups to relinquish some of their defining
aspects to be “modern”. According to Sandeep (2009), “Modernization, typically
characterized by free speech, rule of law, respect for democratic institutions,
science, technology, rational inquiry, and the work ethic, germinated, grew,
and continues to be the defining factors of contemporary Western culture”. Such
a situation then creates a slippery slope where we begin to question whether it
is possible to modernize without Westernizing or whether modernization itself
is a new tool by the Western world to further colonize the non-Western world.
According to Munir (2003), “Modernization has permeated virtually all
societies, including Muslims. But modernity, part of political and cultural
processes by integrating new ideas into society may not always be present”. It
is with that observation in mind that we investigate why modernity often
clashes with Arab Nationalism.
The first and most
obvious collision between modernity and Arab Nationalism is that the more
modernity evolves, the less significant religion becomes in its rhetoric and
behavioral patterns. We have already discussed earlier just how important
religion, particularly Islam, is to Arab Nationalism so it understandable why
they would feel the need to reject the progression of modernity because it
would threaten the significance of Islam. Modernity’s threat to religion is
discussed by Weijian when he says “Religion theoretically is grounded on
reasonable beliefs, while modernization takes reason and science as its norm” (2007).
If you look at Western countries, they traditionally have Christian beliefs but
because of the way modernization has spread in their countries, this has come
at the cost of compromising their religious principles. An example of this is
the gambling capital of the United States of America, Las Vegas. This city is
subtly promoted to potential tourists as the place to come and commit adultery
and engage in other sorts of immoral behaviour with the universally recognised slogan of “What happens in Vegas, stays in
Vegas”. America, in theory, is a Christian country so a city like Las Vegas
would be non-existent if the majority of the country followed strict Christian
principles. Citizens
of the Arab world though have clearly not allowed modernisation to penetrate
their lives as much though because, for the majority of them, religion is a feature
of their everyday lives. Weijian mentions this issue by saying “Today, we can
still see that though the Arab world has already experienced the impact of more
than half a century of industrialization and modernisation, most nations still
retain their Islamic features” (2007). This reason for that situation is Arab
Nationalism’s rejection of modernity’s implication that religion is becoming
more and more obsolete.
With modernity come certain concepts
that are in conflict with the standards and patterns of Arab Nationalism. The
foundation of Arab Nationalism, Islam, for example does not view men and women
as equals but in other parts of the world that
have embraced modernity, institutions like democracy and ideologies such
as feminism have made great advances in the struggle for women to gain equality
with their male counterparts. Patriarchy is one of the teachings of Islam but
the position of the male being superior is now under threat because of what
modernity brings to the table. “Islamic fundamentalists appear to share a
common sense of threat from the changes in gender relations, triggered by the
spread of capitalism and modern concepts of feminism” (Munir 2003). Preventing
what Western thought considers being the emancipation of women is a vital
objective of Islamic fundamentalists because they seek to preserve Islamic law,
which was codified a thousand years ago and has remained constant since. The
modernist/Western view of this is of course “Under the guise of uplifting
Islamic law, the war against women is launched demonstrating the misuse and
abuse of God’s authority in order to impose a suffocating patriarchy among
Muslim society. It is imperative that
Muslim legal specialists develop critical ways of dealing with these issues”
(Minur 2003) but at the same we must also question whether Western views are
being imposed on Muslim’s, and for the purpose of this essay, Arab’s against
their will. This is yet another example of how the interests of modernity often
clash with the interests of Arab Nationalism because no Arab Nationalist will
sit by while their sacred religion of Islam is undermined by to accommodate the
West’s idea of what’s modern or what’s fair. Weijan elaborates on this Arabic
perspective by saying “Only when all cultures are able to enjoy equal dignity
can modernization be of real significance” (2007). At the moment that’s not
happening.
When one reviews Arab Nationalist’s
distrust of the West and its modernity, it is important to consider the issue
of colonial history that is at play as well. Wherever Europe’s great empires
went during the era of colonialism, they considered themselves to be doing a
great favour to the people that were being colonised by bringing “civilization”
to the colonised people. It is that kind of colonial arrogance that you could
say still exists even to this day and that is partly why Arab Nationalists are
alienated by this modernity that is being led by the West. Colonialism caused
so much injury to Arab pride that you could almost say that Arab nationalism
came about as a result of the need to restore that pride. According to Kent
(2008), “Arab Nationalism developed, in part, as a response to the social and
economic changes that came from the colonial and early post-colonial period”
and that alone shows that Arab Nationalism was created as a reaction to the
damage of colonialism. Now that this concept of modernity being offered to
them, they see it as Western cultural colonialism in disguise. Weijian (2007)
explains the suspicions of Arab’s and Muslims with the following extract:
“They oppose modernization because, in
their opinion, modernization is nothing but Westernization with secularization
as its premise, which is against their Islamic tradition. They think that to
restructure their society by the model of the West is actually to promote a
“colonial culture” and to impose Western values and lifestyle on their Muslim
society. This would result in the alienation of politics, economy and social
system and the loss of the traditional values of Islamic states”
What Arabs would rather do is to take
pride in their own cultural identity instead of just blindly accepting Western
culture as at the risk of being re-colonised. Frantz Fanon (1959) once said “Imperialism
leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove not only
from our land, but from our minds as well”. It would appear that that
politically conscious Arab Nationalists and Muslims are taking a similar stance
to that of Fanon’s because they see these elements of Western culture that come
with modernity and are sceptical to embrace them for the purpose of protecting
what makes them Muslim or Arab instead of having their minds ruled over by
cultural imperialism.
The Western powers, who are the net
exporters of modernity also used to be the colonial rulers of a lot of the
world’s territory, including the Arab world, and so that has bearing on how
they inter-act with each other nowadays. It would be naïve to believe that the
world’s great powers view Arab countries as equals because if they did, the
great Western powers wouldn’t have such a hard-time making peace with the Arab
world’s stance on modernity. Fanon (1959) explains this by saying “the occupying
power interprets attachment to traditions as faithfulness to the spirit of the
nation and as a refusal to submit”. Now the Western countries may no longer be
occupying powers in most of the world’s post-colonial countries but they still
impose themselves in some form or another. When Arab countries stand their
ground against Western practices like democracy, free-speech, free-press, and
feminism, the Western countries, partly due to their historical colonial
arrogance will see this as a refusal to submit to their rules and a rejection
of them as nation-states altogether. Perhaps what they fail to see it how much
religious and cultural preservation means to these Arabs whose dignity has been
compromised by the colonialism previously inflicted by them. During the period
of colonialism, “Every effort
is made to bring the colonised person to admit the inferiority of his culture
which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behaviour, to recognise
the unreality of his 'nation', and, in the last extreme, the confused and
imperfect character of his own biological structure” (Fanon, 1959), and now
that these Arab Nationalists are no longer colonised and are politically
conscious, they have no interest in mimicking the West in the way they live
their lives nor do they have much interest in subscribing to rules set to them
by the West. Such a situation is yet another example of the tension between modernity
and Arab Nationalism.
These previously discussed clashes between Arab
nationalism and modernity may not look like they will be sorted out anytime
soon but that does not mean there hasn’t been some progress in other areas,
with regards to Arabs and the West. A resultant of the stand-off between Arab
Nationalism and modernity has been the emergence of “Islamic modernity” which
encompasses certain aspects of modernity that do not contradict with the
teachings of Islam or the agenda of Arab Nationalism. Baraz (2010) explains
Islamic modernity to be a consequent way of thinking that is derived from the
approach of Islamic modernism, which was an attempt to reach a medium between
adaptation and rejection of Western influenced modernity. Baraz goes into
further detail about Islamic modernity by saying “Two influential proponents of
this idea were Islamic reformers Jamal al-Din and his pupil Muhammad Abduh.
They blamed the decline of Muslim societies and their occupation by The West on
taqlid, ‘a blind unquestioned
clinging to the past’” (2010). These Arab Muslims in the Middle East that are
perceptively embracing aspects of modernity to go along with their Islamic
beliefs are known reformist Muslim because they are willing to reform in order
to adapt to the realities if the times. Their position is explained further by
Baraz when he says “Essentially, these Muslim reformists tried to respond to
Western imperialism rather than react to or against it” (2010). For reformists,
the important thing is to be able to hold on to the defining characteristics of
Islam without necessarily rejecting the process of modernity. Such a compromise
creates better relations for reformist Arab’s with the West. The following
explains how reformist Islam works alongside modernity:
“Muslims could selectively apply features of
Western ideas to their own societies as long as they were not divergent to
Islam. He also emphasized the need to differentiate between “immutable” and
“mutable” Muslim traditions; i.e. certain old traditions, which were not
necessary in upholding Islamic law, should be either reformed or discarded.
Abduh placed a heavy emphasis on education as a means of reform.12” – Baraz
(2010)
The main criticism people have towards Islamic
modernism is that politics is inherently embedded in Islam and so by making alteration
ns and compromises on Islamic law, Islamic modernists are essentially
compromising Muslim principles.
The
economic philosophies of Arab Nationalism and that of the West also appear to
be at loggerheads and that again makes Arab Nationalism seem to be out of touch
with modernity because the Capitalist system is practically economically sacred
in the West and thrives on aggressive expansion. According to Kent (2008),
“Arab Nationalism, from the outset carried a socialist ideology” and that right
there clashes with the capitalist agenda of the great Western powers because
they are always going beyond borders in their quest to find fertile investment
grounds. American capitalism for example has spawned numerous restaurant chains
that are globally popular but are infrequent in the Arab world as compared to
everywhere else. Because Arab markets are not as free for capitalist investment
or exploitation from the West, the Arab countries that are resistant to it, are
seen to be out of touch with modernity.
The way in which Muslims are treated in the Western
world also plays a part in making Arab Nationalists reject the modernity that
comes from people who do not view them as equals. Thomas (2009) discusses this
in saying:
“Muslims living in the West who wish to practice
Islam in the way it was traditionally practiced in their homelands necessarily
find their problems increasing. Even in the simple area of choosing an
occupation or finding settled work of any kind, a Muslim must be careful not to
displease Allah. When looking for a restaurant, he must find one that offers
halal food so as to follow Islamic dietary laws. The list goes on. In the final
analysis, a practicing Muslim has a very hard time accepting and becoming a
part of the Western world and its modernity. So whichever society of the West
he and his family have settled in, the conflict continues and grows deeper!”
The world is becoming smaller and smaller these
days and more and more Arabs and Muslims are living in Westernised countries
nowadays. Judging from the above comment from Thomas, they live in rather
awkward conditions because free people are supposed to live in an environment
where their beliefs are catered to.
What
can be deduced thus far is that modernity itself, whether the Western powers
would like to admit or not, is itself the latest tool of colonialism because to
be part of it, Arab states are expected make compromises on the way they’ve
been doing things for a very long time now. It would be understandable if the
will to change Arabic or Muslim way of life came from Arab’s themselves but
when it comes from the Western powers under the guise of bringing “modernity”
to the people, then it just smacks of colonial arrogance. What the West seems
to fail to realise is that not everyone aspires to be like them and have their
values. If they were to realise this, then they would stop trying to re-create
the countries that they deem to be weaker, to be in their image. The position
of privilege that Western countries enjoy should also be no license for them to
see themselves as the benchmark of what’s right, fair, civilised and modern.
Arab countries, and everyone else for that matter, should be given the freedom
to do things according to their own values and accept modernization on their
own terms
It
has thus far been proven that the reason that Arabic countries have been
reluctant and slow in adapting to the “modernity” is due to their distrust of the
Western powers that might have a hidden agenda of spreading cultural
colonialism. This essay has also explained why Arab Nationalism is the main
obstacle in the way of Western modernity spreading throughout the Arab world,
which spans from North Africa, The Middle East, and The Persian Gulf. Part of
the discussion was about giving clear definitions of Arab Nationalism and
modernity, while their features were also unpacked so as to give a clearer
understanding when moving forward. The massive role of Islam in the ideology of
Arab Nationalism was also explained because it was revealed to be the
foundation of Arab Nationalism. From then on, we examined the various clashes
of Arab Nationalism and modernity, ranging from the significance religion to
the emancipation of women. The links that modernity has with the colonial
system were also exposed as a means to explain the sceptic stance that Arab’s
have taken on modernity. Overall we concluded that modernity should not be
forced on Arabs and that Arab Nationalism was a movement that was working for
the betterment of all Arabs and Muslims by protecting the sanctity of both
those institutions.
