THE CLASH BETWEEN MODERNITY AND ARAB NATIONALISM

@KwaziThabethe

The era of colonialism may have long been declared to have passed but many countries that are former colonies still share formal and informal relationships with their former colonisers and other more developed Western countries. These relationships reflect a pattern that is very similar to the colonial pattern that existed before a country gained independence because the Western countries still set the pace and the standard of how the countries move forward despite the citizens of the former colonies being supposedly free to determine their own agenda and grow at their own pace without having anything imposed on them by stronger, more developed Westernised nations. This aforementioned colonial pattern in relations between two supposedly free countries is evident in many parts of the world but the one place where it seems to be battling is the Arab region of the world. The reason for this is that Arabic countries have been reluctant and slow in adapting to the “modernity” that the Western powers are spreading throughout the world and this piece will explain why that is so by identify Arab Nationalism as 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. Before engaging in the discussion however, clear definitions will be given of Arab Nationalism and modernity and their features will be unpacked so as to give a clearer understanding when moving forward. The massive role of Islam in the ideology of Arab Nationalism will also be explained because it will be revealed to be the foundation of Arab Nationalism. From then on, we will examine 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 will also be exposed along to explain the sceptic stance that Arab’s have taken on modernity.

 

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.