A REPLY TO BASSEL F. SALLOUKH'S REVIEW OF ARABS AT THE CROSSROADS: POLITICAL IDENTITY AND NATIONALISM (IJMES 36 [2004]: 527–28)

Abstract

In his review of my book Arabs at the Crossroads: Political Identity and Nationalism, the neophyte political scientist Bassel F. Salloukh attempts to instruct me on the fundamentals of research methodology. Sadly, however, his review amounts to nothing more than a brazen barrage of protestations and disapprovals. I counted about two dozen complaints and unsubstantiated criticisms in the one-and-a-half-page review, in which he summarily condemns the book for its purported “sweeping indictment of Arab failures.” Salloukh unleashes a fiery litany of pseudoacademic indignation because I found the political-culture approach and crises of identity and legitimacy relevant to the study of failed Arab political systems. The reviewer is certainly free to disagree with my approach, but professional integrity necessitates that he adopt a method more academic than screeching sophomoric objections. Rather than develop an analytical case against me, the reviewer instead opts to swing from the hip, falsely attributing to me things that I never said, such as my alleged identification of a “basic foundational dislocation that has doomed everything Arab.”