Arab Intellectuals Research Articles

On Zionism or The Zionist Question by Muḥammad Rūḥī al-Khālidī (1864-1913): Exploring the Context of a Pioneering Work

Every critical evaluation that reviews written contributions by Arab intellectuals in the late Ottoman period is certainly vital; nevertheless, one has to engage in this endeavor cautiously. Not unlike other traditions from the past, the Arabic scholarly legacy during the early 1900s is elusive, multi-layered, and does not just give itself up to “rediscovery.”1 Revisiting any work composed in Arabic in the first decade of the twentieth century should proceed systematically through a process of textual analysis, with the sociocultural milieu of the era firmly kept in mind.

Pain, Tears and Blood: Doubts about the Concept of Revolution in Ghāʾib Ṭuʿmah Farmān’s al-Makhāḍ

ABSTRACT In 1974, Iraqi-born Ghāʾib Ṭuʿmah Farmān (1927–1990) published his novel al-Makhāḍ (Labor Pains. Baghdad: Maktabat al-Taḥrīr, 1974). Farmān had subscribed to Communist ideas since his youth, a leaning for which he was also arrested, yet in this novel, he bluntly expresses his disappointment with the 1958 Iraqi revolution’s consequences and his doubts about the concept of revolution itself. In this study, Farmān’s novel will be placed within the broader historical and cultural context in which Leftist Arab intellectuals became critical of the Iraqi revolutions of 1958, 1963 and 1968 alike. A close reading of the novel, published six years after the Baʿth revolution of 1968 and the rise of Saddam Hussein to power, reveals admonitions on possible future turns of events. To wit, the concentration of power in the hands of the state and the regime, persecution of political rivals, favoring regime allies, economic disparities, as well as the discord between the noble goals of the revolution and its contradictions in the preservation of the post-revolutionary order.

Disappointment and vision in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings

ABSTRACT Most commentators concede that the Arab uprisings of 2010–11 fell dramatically short of meeting their aspirations. For some, this wave of popular protests was an undeniable failure. Others draw more conflicted conclusions. They do not gainsay the realities of authoritarian retrenchment and war, but underscore the democratic practices and attitudes that have expanded over the past decade-plus. In the midst of such discussions, scant attention has been paid to how Arab intellectuals reacted to and evaluated the uprisings’ fates. This article addresses this gap by considering the writings of contemporary Moroccan intellectual Abdelilah Belkeziz. I argue that the sense of disappointment that he both expresses and notes among participants and observers of the Arab uprisings alike serves as a source of vision through which to productively consider the movements and their future trajectories, and to avoid the pitfalls of excessive optimism and despair.

«Философия беспорядка»: рецепция работ Н.А. Бердяева в арабской печати середины ХХ в.

The article is devoted to the Arabic reception of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev works in the mid-twentieth century. The author demonstrates the influence of Berdyaev’s theories on a number of Arab intellectuals (e.g. ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī (1917–2002), ʻAbbās Maḥmūd al-ʻAqqād (1889–1964) and Anṭūn Saʻādah (1904–1949)), and also reveals the influence of the work “Slavery and Freedom” on the political press of the 1940s. The popularity of Berdyaev’s existentialism in the intellectual circles of Lebanon and Egypt is explained as a natural consequence of its manifestative nature and terminological simplicity. The study is preceded by a brief summary of the translations of Berdyaev’s works into Arabic, completed in 1960–2019.

The Islamic Cultural Heritage as a “Problem”: Is Arab Political Science Culturalist?

The study of political culture in the Arab world presents us with a paradox: albeit cultural explanations of Arab politics by Western scholars (e.g., Huntington 1993) have been widely criticized from within the region as latter-day Orientalist views, the cultural approach remains one of the leading analytical approaches employed in Arab social sciences. Central to this tradition is the idea that Arab societies have specific cultural characteristics that contribute to, or are the cause of, the region’s general “backwardness,” especially politically. Collectively known as critics of al-turāth (cultural heritage), this school of thought sparked important scholarly debates in Arab academic circles. This paper reflects on these debates, mainly focusing on how Arab political science, broadly defined, has considered the role of culture as a potential explanatory variable for the endurance of authoritarianism in the Arab world and the failure of democratic transitions. Several influential Arab intellectuals adopt the cultural approach, but they do not necessarily define culture in static, primordial, or fixed terms. If Arab political culture is deemed problematic, it can still be changed. For this academic tradition, the “critical intellectual” is a central agent for any sociocultural and political change.

«Философия беспорядка»: рецепция работ Н.А. Бердяева в арабской печати середины ХХ в.

The article is devoted to the Arabic reception of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev works in the mid-twentieth century. The author demonstrates the influence of Berdyaev’s theories on a number of Arab intellectuals (e.g. ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī (1917–2002), ʻAbbās Maḥmūd al-ʻAqqād (1889–1964) and Anṭūn Saʻādah (1904–1949)), and also reveals the influence of the work “Slavery and Freedom” on the political press of the 1940s. The popularity of Berdyaev’s existentialism in the intellectual circles of Lebanon and Egypt is explained as a natural consequence of its manifestative nature and terminological simplicity. The study is preceded by a brief summary of the translations of Berdyaev’s works into Arabic, completed in 1960–2019.

The Predicament of a Palestinian Hebraist, 1912–1979

Abstract: This essay explores Palestinian Arab knowledge production on Zionism. It focuses on the life of Ribhi Kamal (1912–79), a Palestinian scholar of Semitic languages who grew up in Jerusalem and excelled in modern Hebrew. During the 1948 War, Kamal was exiled to Damascus, where he repurposed his expertise in the service of the Syrian state. Kamal became the host of Radio Damascus’s Hebrew-language broadcast, a propaganda program that called on Jewish Israelis to resist Zionism and return to their “true” home countries. Kamal’s biography and work on Radio Damascus raise several broader questions. What led Arab intellectuals to study Hebrew in the early twentieth century? How did Palestinians employ their pre-1948 knowledge of Hebrew and Zionism in the service of post-1948 Arab governments? And how did Arab governments use radio as a tool of anticolonial propaganda?

WORLD CUP 2022 IN QATAR AS A STIMULUS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS OF ARAB INTELLECTUALS

The author analyzes the information discourse of the World Cup 2022 in Qatar through the prism of the liberal Arab media. It is assumed that the Qatari Championship turned out to be both a sporting and political event. The article highlights the main problems that formed the information agenda, as well as the vectors and trajectories of the interpretation and perception of the Championship by liberal analysts and experts. It is assumed that the Championship stimulated political and ideological contradictions between Arab experts. The author believes that Arab analysts formally used sports events to actualize the political, social and economic problems and contradictions of the Middle East in the information discourse. It is shown that the Championship underlined political contradictions, visualizing the lines of ideological demarcations between Arab intellectuals, who used sports as an information occasion for discussing political problems actively, including authoritarianism, democracy and human rights. The article analyzes the main vectors and trajectories of the politicization and ideologization of sport in the liberal segment of the Arab information discourse. The author presumes that the reaction of political elites to criticism of the liberal media was minimal, as the economic effect outweighed the reputational losses from liberal accusations. Therefore, it is shown that the reaction of the liberal media to the Championship 2022 in Qatar had a limited effect, contributing to the visualization of the liberal trend in the modern Arab world, highlighting the political and economic contradictions between the Arab states.

The Fallacies of Bridging the East and West in Tayeb Salih’s 'Season of Migration to the North' and Laila Halaby’s 'Once in a Promised Land'

Objectives: The paper examines the role of two contemporary Arab novelists, Tayeb Salih and Laila Halaby, who depict the fallacies of bridging the East and West. Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1966) and Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land (2007) tackle the social, cultural, political, historical, and religious factors and obstacles that resulted in widening the gap between the East and West. The aim of this study is to also trace how Salih’s and Halaby’s characters' attitudes towards this harmony between both cultures develop throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. Methods: This paper employs a socio-political and cultural approach to discuss the role of the contemporary Arab intellectual in presenting the possibility of bridging the cultural and humanitarian gap between the East and West. Results: This study finds that there are two groups of Arab intellectuals: those haunted by violent memories of Western colonization, who are incapable of creating a harmonious relationship with the West, and the liberal Arab intellectuals who reflect a great readiness to assimilate into Western culture. Conclusions: This study concludes that all attempts by these characters to create harmony between the East and the West are futile.

Critical Hope

Abstract This article explores the theory and practice of critique in the works of the Lebanese Communist intellectual Husayn Muruwwa (1910–1987) and his grandson Rabih Mroué (b. 1967). Husayn Muruwwa, one of the most important Arab intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century, reinvented literary criticism and cultural critique in the 1950s and '60s. His grandson, one of the most prominent Arab visual artists, has been redefining the critical approach to visual representation since the Lebanese civil war. The article pits Husayn Muruwwa's critique based on collective hope and emancipation against his grandson's vision of an individualistic critique based on desire. It considers the critical and political writings of Husayn Muruwwa and Rabih Mroué's performances, video lectures, and interviews to explore specifically how they represent hope in relation to critique, and it ultimately suggests a participatory aesthetics that is common to both and that transcends their autobiographical statements and establishes resonances between their thought. Their approaches to critique, the article illustrates, play out as revised inheritances of both the Arab renaissance (nahda) and the national liberation movements in the 1970s. These revisions create a continuity that is critical to understanding the relationship between critique and hope in the Arab intellectual tradition.

The crusades in the Arab social and political discourse of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Throughout the period of the Arab National Renaissance (al-nahḍa), which unfolded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Arab intellectuals frequently referred to the age of the crusades, drawing parallels between that historical epoch and modern-day relations between Europe and the Muslim world. After analyzing the works of representatives of the three major ideological movements of that period: pan-Islamism, pan-Ottomanism, and Arab nationalism, the present article formulates the following major interpretations of the role of the crusades in the history of the Arab Middle East: (a) as a punishment for the distortion of the original Islam of the Prophet and his companions (for which some blamed the Seljuk Turks, others the Muslim mystics or Sufis); (b) as a reason for the subsequent prosperity and progress of Western societies after their contact with a superior Muslim civilization; (c) as a source of religious fanaticism in the Middle East; (d) as the events that foreshadow the modern military conflicts around the Mediterranean and beyond, especially the Mahdist rebellion in the Sudan and the Crimean War; (e) as an era that demonstrated the weakness of religion as a force of mass mobilization; (f) as a period when the Muslims of the Middle East protected Middle Eastern Christians from the Westerners. Moreover, at the end of the nineteenth century, some Arab intellectuals for the first time described the medieval crusader states of the Levant as ‘colonial’ (al-duwal al-musta’mira al-ifranjiyya).

Восприятие Чемпионата мира по футболу 2022 г. в Катаре в арабской либеральной аналитике как форма политики памяти

Introduction. The author analyzes the informa- tional discourse of the World Cup in Qatar through the prism of collective historical memory. It is assumed that the Qatari Championship turned out to be both a sporting and political event. The article highlights the main problems that formed the information agenda, as well as the vectors and trajectories of the interpretation and perception of the Championship by liberal analysts and experts. Goal. The purpose of the article is to analyze the main directions of the liberal perception of the World Cup in Qatar in the information discourse of “Al-Araby Al-Jadeed” through the prism of the historical politics of memory. Methods. The author uses the methods proposed within the memorial turn in modern interdiscipli- nary historiography, which make it possible to iden- tify and systematize the features of the transfor- mation of the collective historical memory of Arab societies through the prism of sports, actualised by the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Scientific novelty. The article is one of the few at- tempts to interpret the historical politics of memory in modern society in the context of the perception of sports as an element of the memorial culture and historical experience of the Arab societies of the Middle East. Results. The article analyzes the main vectors and trajectories of the use of sports for the politiciza- tion and ideologization of historical memory. It is assumed that the Championship stimulated political and ideological contradictions between Arab experts on the issues of collective historical and political experience, as well as its reflection in memorial cultures. The author believes that Arab analysts formally used sports events to update the political, social and economic problems and contradictions of the Middle East through the prism of historical memory, visualizing the trauma of the colonial and orientalist heritage. Conclusions. It is shown that the Championship ac- tualized political contradictions in the perception of current historical experience, visualizing the lines of ideological demarcation between Arab intellectuals who actively used sports as an information occa- sion for discussing the problems of historical poli- tics and the politics of collective memory, including the perception of the place and role of authoritari- anism, democracy and human rights in contempo- rary memorial cultures. The author believes that the reaction of the elites to the attempts of the liberal media to turn sport into a space for memo- rial conflicts and wars of memory was minimal, as the elites were focused on maintaining control and receiving economic dividends from the World Cup. It is shown that the politicization of sports has become the contribution of modern liberal media to the aggravation of wars of memory as a form of memorial conflicts in the Arab world.

A “Church of / for Poetry”: Revue Aguedal and The Friends of Amazigh Literature

AbstractThis article examines the literary and spiritual initiatives undertaken by Henri Bosco and his collaborators, notably Captain Léopold Justinard, in interwar colonial Morocco. Focusing on the Revue Aguedal, inaugurated by Bosco in Rabat in 1935, I highlight the revue's primary role as a cultural conduit between French and indigenous Amazigh and Arab intellectuals. Bosco's concept of a “poetic church,” championed by contributors such as René Guénon and Ahmed Sefriou, sought to document, safeguard, and translate Amazigh and North African literature. Although the Aguedal literary project experienced interruptions during World War II, it accentuated indigenous perspectives through sections like “Propos du Chleuh,” overseen by Justinard. I also underscore Bosco's simultaneous advocacy for French culture, challenging stereotypical colonial narratives while amplifying Amazigh voices within them. Despite financial challenges leading to the revue's demise after the war, the literary circle fostered enduring literary relationships and left an indelible mark on the nexus of colonial scholarship, literature, and spirituality.

POLITICS OF MEMORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: ASSIMILATION FEATURES OF THE WESTERN MEMORIAL PROJECT IN ARAB LIBERALISM

The purpose of the study is to analyze the liberal version of the politics of memory in the modern Arab world. The author analyzes the features and main directions of constructing the past by Arab intellectuals. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of liberal trends in the actual memorial culture of the Arab world. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinary historiography of historical and cultural collective memories. The author distinguishes the concepts of "historical politics" and "politics of memory". It is assumed that “historical politics” is conducted by political elites for the reproduction of conservative stability and loyalty. The author analyzes the “politics of memory” as a number of practices and strategies of Arab liberal intellectuals using radical humanitarian epistemology for construction and promotion of new versions and forms of the past, forming alternative memorial cultures and canons. The article analyzes the activity of liberal Arab intellectuals in contexts of the heterogeneity of modern intellectual historical culture. The article also analyzes attempts to transplant a radical humanitarian epistemology as a form of revision of historical memory. It is assumed that the liberal form of the memorial politics is alternative and marginal simultaneously, but theoretically and methodologically, the ideas of Arab liberals are comparable with the main trends in the development of Western interdisciplinary historiography of memorial cultures.

Culture outside of the state: aesthetics and education in the works of Salama Musa, Taha Husayn, and Ramsis Yunan

ABSTRACT This article analyses Egyptian definitions of thaqāfa or “culture” from 1922 to 1954 by focusing on three intellectuals: Salama Musa (1887–1958), Taha Husayn (1889–1973), and Ramsis Yunan (1913–1966). It considers how their definitions complicated the European integration of the term into the Arabic language, and how they contrasted with other relevant terms such as tarbiya (moral education) and taʿlīm (institutional instruction). Examining the cultural idioms embedded in these definitions challenges a typography that assumes a radical break between Arab intellectuals before and after the 1950s. By examining how the adaptation of socialist thought nuanced these appropriations, the article shows how the three intellectuals propose a definition of thaqāfa that borrows from transnational aesthetics to produce localized formulations of socialist realism and surrealism and advocate for a local humanism that works to keep literature and the arts outside of state control while educating people to resist fascist movements.

Reconsidering Dabashi's View in Anglophone Iraqi Poetry

In Brown Skin, White Masks, Hamid Dabashi critically examines the relationship between race and colonialism re-questioning Edward Said’s concept of the ‘intellectual exile’. Said stood in defense of Arab intellectuals who lived in the West and wrote anti-colonialist literature. On the other hand, decades later, Hamid Dabashi saw the situation of post-colonialism from a different angle and took his own stance from those Arab writers of post-colonialism. He reverses the positive image of some exilic intellectuals in order to shed light on the negative role which they can play. Dabashi calls them ‘native informers’ since they denigrate their cultures in a way that serves the Western ideology. This paper explores Dabashi’s concept of native informers in selected texts of Iraqi poetry. It argues that the Anglophone Iraqi poets, who paraded as ‘voices of dissent’, employ their poetry, unintentionally, to propagandize the American strategy which needs to assure the world that they are the superior nation. It concludes that the three poets under discussion, Sinan Antoon, Hashim Shafiq, and Dunya Mikhail have an apocalyptic point of view toward what is happening in Iraq; therefore, they cannot be accused of being disloyal or conspiracies against their homeland since they criticize in the hope of reforming the political system. The paper implements an analytical approach to apply Dabashi’s theory on the selected texts.

Review: Knowledge, Ideology, and Civilization: An Attempt at Understanding History (Arabic Edition), by Ali Jarbawi

Review: <i>Knowledge, Ideology, and Civilization: An Attempt at Understanding History (Arabic Edition)</i>, by Ali Jarbawi

Modernity from Elsewhere: Psychoanalysis, Ethnography, and Speculative Horizons of Self-Assertion

Modernity from Elsewhere: Psychoanalysis, Ethnography, and Speculative Horizons of Self-Assertion

Sex, Sovereignty, and the Biological in the Interwar Arab East

This article frames the history of anticolonialism in the Arab world as a history of gender, sex, and power. By thinking with early twentieth-century Arab intellectuals, it revises the assumption that the heterosexual body enters into politics primarily as a site of regulation and control. Europeans justified colonialism in the Arab East by arguing that Arabs were like children who needed tutelage before self-rule. Arab writers contested these temporal assumptions through their own theories of human development. Some figured childrearing as a form of temporal engineering through which Arab women would control human and civilizational growth. Others, like cosmopolitan Arab nationalist Fuʾad Sarruf, advocated an anticolonial nationalism that tied the temporality of rupture and event to the sexual development of the male body. These responses by Arab intellectuals to assumptions of colonial belatedness show how the biological body entered anticolonial politics as an active agent of political transformation.

Democracy, the West and the Crisis of the Arab World: Arab Intellectuals of Al-Jazeera.net as Drivers of Change

This paper analyzes the opinions, arguments, and topics in the writings of a diverse group of Arab intellectuals contributed to the Al Jazeera website during the period preceding the Arab uprisings of 2011. The intellectuals addressed prevalent social, economic and political problems in the Arab world and responded to dichotomies such as democracy versus authoritarianism, the Arab world versus the West, and revivalist versus moderate interpretations of Islam. Based on a Critical Discourse Analysis approach (Fairclough &amp; Wodak, 1997; Reisigl &amp; Wodak, 2009), a corpus of 57 articles published between 2008 and 2010 was compiled. The analysis shows that four topics underpinned these writings and provided a programmatic agenda for change. Lamenting the abysmal conditions in the Arab world, criticizing Western hegemony over the region, calling for democracy, and advocating a moderate form of Islam loomed large in their writings. This paper emphasizes the disruptive and transformative power of online media through which these reformist writers acted as drivers of change seeking reform and change in the Arab world.