Pan-Arab Nationalism Research Articles

Socialist Realism in the Language of Ḍād: A Literary Identity for Syria, a Test-Case for World Literature

Socialist Realism in the Language of Ḍād:A Literary Identity for Syria, a Test-Case for World Literature Daniel Behar (bio) As of late, two studies by Yoav Di Capua and Alexa Firat have thrown light on the reception of Socialist Realism in the Arab world with an emphasis on Syrian literature. Both use literary and intellectual history to place Socialist Realist thinking in a varied landscape of Arab meta-literary discourse in the 20th century. Building on their work, this article takes a comparative literary approach by setting the theoretical positions against Arabic literary texts classified as Socialist Realist and providing an overview of the dilemmas arising from reading Socialist Realism as World Literature. By World Literature, I heuristically mean texts that circulate outside their context of origin and that may gain or lose in translation (Damrosch). For this panoramic perspective, I rely on the work of Katerina Clark who has limned the outlines of a Kremlin-centered idea of internationalist World literature. The article is divided in three parts. The overview discusses the emergence of Arab Socialist Realism in the framework of a Second-World universal of literature. It elaborates on the interaction between meta-literary discourse and actual compositional models employed in Socialist Realism's cross-national transit. The first part investigates the first stage of development as manifested in the Syrian literary field. This period of literary history is defined by the Syrian critic Ḥannā ʿAbbūd as "the golden age of [End Page 379] socialist realism" (Firat, "Cultural Battles" 158). In this stage I posit a fruitful tension between the theoretical level where a desire for identity with the Soviet model is expressed and the grounds of writing where an urgency is felt to lend aesthetic dignity to local realities and enhance the professional role of the Syrian creative writer as autonomous. The second part addresses a second iteration of Socialist Realism characterized by a more seasoned ability to duplicate the Soviet model. This ability is explained by changing political circumstances and specific cultural institutions that introduced isomorphic resemblances between Syria and the Soviet state. On the cultural side, it is ascribed to a sharpened global awareness of Leninism, Maoism, and Marxist aesthetics, but also to a gained sense of territorial identity within Syria. Under these conditions, a unique corpus of Euphrates literature emerged that included the first genuine production novel in Arabic: Fāris Zarzūr's Āna lahu an yanṣāʿa (Time for Him to Yield, 1980). I set this novel against rival fictional accounts of the Euphrates Dam construction and suggest why the mutual imbrication of socialism and the Baʿthist state heightened the stakes of the genre. The tracks of Socialist Realism in Syria are partially covered because prominent features associated with its poetics have blended indistinguishably with the discourse of iltizām, a polyvalent literary idea laden with a wide range of meanings. Essentially a transculturation of Jean Paul Sartre's notion of engagement, it is an ethos of writerly commitment to the national liberation cause as envisioned by a group of prominent Arab writers.1 It gained currency in the decolonizing period for blending the ascendant Pan-Arab nationalism with existentialist individualism inspired by Sartre's post-war writings. The most powerful utopian strain in the Arab twentieth century was, as Robyn Creswell has suggested, that of political unification of the Arabs under one rule (75–6). Various Arab polities were engaged in fervent contest to become the standard bearer of Arabism; and the utopian tendencies of Socialist Realism got caught up in the mix of the dominant nationalist utopias. This produced some unintended consequences for both Socialist Realism and triumphalist discourses of Arabness, which persisted all throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The difficulty of tracking the vagaries of iltizām is that while the term continued to circulate well into the 1980s and 1990s, its meanings have [End Page 380] shifted over time. In the 1950s, it boosted cultural authenticity under threat of assimilation into internationalist socialist literature, on the one hand, and pure artistic autonomy on the other. In these beginnings, the colossal scale of literary ideas originating in Moscow appeared daunting and enhanced...

End of an era in the Middle East and North Africa: Collapse of Pan-Arab nationalism project and the subsequent rise of political Islam

End of an era in the Middle East and North Africa: Collapse of Pan-Arab nationalism project and the subsequent rise of political Islam

MERIP and Political Economy in Middle East Studies

AbstractThe Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) was founded in 1971 as a project of the American New Left in solidarity with and drawing inspiration from the Beirut-centered Arab New Left and anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation in the Middle East and North Africa. The question of Palestine was a central, but certainly not exclusive, concern. From its origins MERIP was committed to political economy as a key method to understanding the Middle East and North Africa. It highlighted the importance of oil in the regional power structure and to the emergent U.S. empire. Many of its articles featured analyses of the social relationships of class and capital. MERIP was wary of “Arab socialism” and pan-Arab nationalism as official state ideologies. Its analysis of the 1979 Iranian revolution won MERIP and its emphasis on the importance of political economy a respected place in Anglo-American academia. Political economy never disappeared from MERIP's orientation, although its salience declined from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s. The financial crisis of 2008 drew renewed attention to the structure of global capitalism. MERIP's history positioned it to participate in the renewed attention to class, capital, markets with more attention to the racialized and gendered character of these relationships.

THE WAR IN SYRIA: A LONGUE DURÉE PERSPECTIVE

Many existing studies on the war in Syria offer important insights but none fully engages the longue durée of history and its implications. Syria like many other states in Asia was established and institutionalized in the context of the growth and expansion of a capitalist world economy centred in Europe. The Franco-British reorganization of the Levant between the two world wars was supposed to support long-term processes of wealth accumulation and economic growth but forceful integration in the world economy set the stage instead for nationalist backlashes, economic crises, and war. Indeed, one of the driving forces of conflict in Syria as well as in other parts of the developing world has been the recurrence of struggles between those pushing for ever greater capitalist integration and those resisting such efforts in the name of alternative ideologies, including communism, Pan-Arab nationalism, and various distinct currents of political Islam. To demonstrate these dynamics, this paper will present a sweeping overview of the history of Syria and of the greater region, from Ottoman times to the present. It will also examine in detail the war that broke out in Syria in 2011, highlighting how it relates to broader struggles unfolding across the immediate region and beyond.

Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt

Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt

GULF STATES' POLICY TOWARDS SYRIAN REFUGEES: CHARITY BEFORE HOSPITALITY

The regional turmoil in the Middle East since December 2010 has provided researchers with many topics for research. Despite a relatively large number of studies in recent years, none of them deal with one of the central questions – namely, the attitude of the Gulf States toward the misery of the Syrian refugees. While more than six million Syrians fled their homeland and became refugees, 1.5 million in Europe, few, if any, succeeded in relocating to the Gulf States.This paper endeavors to explore the Gulf States' policy toward Arab (mostly Syrian) refugees. The major finding is that GCC members prefer to grant financial support to refugees outside of the Gulf region (this is justified as charity – Zakat) instead of hosting refugees. The combination of a fragile demographic structure, fear of political and social instability, and constant concern about infiltration by terrorists under the guise of refugees are the main reasons for the policy of closing the gates entirely to the refugees. These concerns also indicate that the idea of the nation state prevails over pan-Arab nationalism.

Pluricentricity and heritage language maintenance of Arab immigrants in the English speaking New World countries

Historical accounts of immigration from the Arab world show that Arab immigrants ended up in different New World destinations including North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The present review intended to be representative of studies on Arabic language contact and maintenance in English speaking New Word countries. As a pluricentric language (Abd-el-Jawad, 1992; Clyne & Kipp, 1999), Arabic has been brought to English speaking New Word countries by Arab immigrants from a range of different Arab countries. The Arabic language and its role in the formation of pan-Arab nationalism or Arabness throughout the Arab world seem to have an impact on the dynamics of Arabic language contact in immigrant multilingual contexts. The review indicates that Arabic pluricentricity plays an important role in creating a sense of “shared Arabness” among different Arabic-speaking immigrant groups. As a base of networking, the Arabic language provides one aspect of commonality for Arab immigrants that transcends other possible aspects such as religion and country of origin. Thus, Arabic operates as an important identity marker that seems to bring Arabic speaking immigrants together to establish their own ethnic associations and arrange for a variety of community events and activities conducive to heritage language maintenance.

Introduction to a general reading of the Arab scene

This paper provides a reading of the current Arab scene with a view to understanding the reasons for its present frustrating and depressing decline. The establishment of the Arab League in 1945 embodied the birth of the modern Arab regional system. The rise of a period of pan-Arab nationalism saw numerous successes for the Arab system and possibilities for achieving Arab unity. However, this was followed by the defeat of the 1967 war, inter-Arab conflicts, the other setbacks for pan-Arabism and increasing foreign penetration, particularly by the United States, Israel, Turkey and Iran. This foreign interference, increasing terrorism and the rise of sectarian and ethnic divisions now threaten the integrity of the Arab system as well as the Arab identity. The Arab system and the Arab League are failing to tackle these threats effectively and the League has made decisions that have had serious repercussions for many critical Arab issues. The Arab Spring represented a hope for a renaissance of the Arab system, but in some cases it has worsened foreign penetration and caused further instability. This paper proposes that it is necessary to examine the features of the Arab scene in order to understand its predicament and reflect on the prospects for this decline to be exacerbated or contained. The conclusion looks at several possible future scenarios for the Arab scene.

From pan-Arab nationalism to political Islam: A Ricoeurian reading of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the ‘6th Arab-Israeli war’ in Lebanon

Abstract Set within the wider framework of exploring the relationship between mediated representations of war and public understanding and perception of conflict in the Arab region, this article focuses on Al Jazeera’s coverage of the July war in Lebanon. From a broad theoretical viewpoint, it attempts to deconstruct the ‘ideological model of war’ as depicted by Al-Jazeera through its representation of the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. When Al-Jazeera framed it as the ‘6th war’, it added Israel’s attack on Lebanon to the series of five episodes of the Arab–Israeli conflict; this war follows the 1948 Palestine War, the Suez War in 1956, the June War of 1967 and the October 1973 War. Stemming from the work of Paul Ricoeur in Time and Narrative (1984), this article suggests a reading of Al-Jazeera’s narrative of the war in three times: the first mediated configurations, the media emplotment, and the re-activation by the channel’s audience. While it situates the discourse of Al Jazeera in relation to the Voice of the Arabs radio, which advocated in the 1950s for a nationalist, resistant and anti-colonial identity, this article also explores the dual nature of Al Jazeera between pan-Arabism and political Islam.

ARAB DI-­NATIONALISM

This paper presents a new conception of "Arab nationalism", which conventionally means pan-Arab nationalism and defines an Arab as an "Arabic speaker". Yet the term "Arabic" is elusive, as is the generic "Arabic speaker"...

TREN PEMIKIRAN INTELEKTUAL MUSLIM KONTEMPORER DI TIMUR TENGAH PASCA-DIFITISME 1967

This article is an effort to make a clear map on contemporary Muslim intellectuals in the Middle East after the Arab defeat in 1967. The Six-Day War took place in June 1967 was a disaster for the Arab world. It ended the ideology of Pan-Arab nationalism and encouraged the rise of four compating self-criticism ideologies: Marxism, Liberalism, Fundamentalism and Nationalism. The four ideologies have their own particular responses and solutions to the Arab crisis. The result of this research shows that Islamic fundamentalism is still the strongest ideology compared to the secular ideologies. The Arab Spring in 2011 proved the fact and paved a way for the Islmists to become dominant in the political arena, as recently shown in Egypt. The other Islamist militant groups, such as Jama’ah Islamiyyah are now more free to promote the implementation of Islamic syari’ah.

Readers Respond

Readers Respond

International Mobile Roaming in the Arab World

International Mobile Roaming (IMR) in the twenty-two countries of the Arab League presents the conventional problems of addressing persistently high charges with retail and wholesale markets in different countries. It must also address pan-Arab nationalism and ancient patterns of religion-induced travel, as well as contemporary demands of trade and tourism. Analysis of IMR prices was conducted by AREGNET, the network of Arab telecommunications regulators, in 2006-07, finding high and very high charges with seemingly random variations. It has subsequently made a sequence of proposals to improve the transparency of prices and a mechanism to cap prices. However, the Arab Council of Ministers has yet to agree to implement these measures. The most recent proposal is a draft memorandum of understanding amongst the regulators, agreeing to cut wholesale prices and to cap retail mark-ups. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have already imposed transparency measures on operators licensed there, requiring them to send an SMS with pricing information to their roaming customers. Together with the four other countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), they are pursuing the AREGNET price reduction plans. The approaches taken have little or no basis in economic analysis, for example, there have been impact assessments, nor are there consumer surveys or market data (except for some commercial data). Instead the Arab regulators have relied on variations of the proposals developed by the European Commission. However, they do not have the rigorous consultations and legislative processes of the European Union. The lack of an economic grounding has made it difficult to adjust proposals to the market developments. There are significant risks of waterbed effects, with complaints that some operators have already increased their wholesale prices, notably those trying to “recover” revenues lost by the EU Roaming Regulation. Zain, the Kuwait-based international operator group, abolished IMR surcharges starting in East Africa and extending to several Arab states, including deals with Mobinil in Egypt and Paltel in Palestine. Customers can buy local top-up cards and pay their home tariff, including receiving calls for free. This “One Network” offer has been extended from voice and SMS to “One Office” with data and Internet access. While few other operators match the geographic coverage of Zain, several have responded on key travel and trade routes, for example, around the Persian Gulf and from there to Egypt. This has required companies that are otherwise rivals to collaborate, offering each other discounted wholesale rates. Attempts by the operators individually and collectively through the GSM Association to block price controls have been resisted by the regulators. However, they have had more success with the ministers. It is unclear whether the Arab Council of Ministers will ever adopt binding legal measures or indeed whether they can, given the diversity of their institutions, the limitations of the available legal instruments and their mixed motivations. The two approaches, of price caps and discounted tariffs do not fit easily together. An alternative regulatory approach would have been to analyse the market in order to identify structural remedies that might have been used to mandate access for IMR.

The Miracle of Emile Habiby's Pessoptimist

This article argues that the ideological blockade in the U.S. academy against any assertion of pan-Arab nationalism is most transparent when it comes to Palestinian writers. A consequence of more than forty years of pro-Israel propaganda aimed at discrediting and silencing the Palestinian right of self-determination, the Pale stinian abyss in American academic cultural studies and also its twentieth-century world literature curricula is best illustrated by the invisibility of Emile Habiby's internationaly celebrated novel The Secret Life of Saeed, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist . Written in Arabic and originaly published in Haifa in 1974, Habiby's self-ironic and wickedly sarcastic postmodernist pastiche quickly became a classic in the modern Arabic literature tradition and, after translation into English, named by critics a Palestinian masterpiece. For the Palestinian people themselves, from the Diaspora and those living inside Israel to the milions still under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, Habiby's Pessoptimist signifies the beginnings of a distinctive Palestinian national literary form. The purpose of this critique is to appreciate Habiby's logic on its own terms, but it is also to liberate his masterpiece from the Zionist corral—to project it outward into the world of other nations, peoples, and intellectual styles. In this task, a special emphasis is placed on the Arabic trickster figure, Juha , who, while completely singular in origin and meaning in Arabic folklore, has several compelling counterparts in world literature, in particular the African American Signifyin' Monkey. From this double-critique—establishing at once the singularity of Habiby's trickster figure and opening it up to other worldly comparisons—a new concept is offered, what the author terms "the blues people of Palestine." The concept is used to illuminate Habiby's iconoclastic narrative style, and to understand the extremely complex multi-voicedness of the text itself.

Lebanon, 1860-1960: a century of myth and politics

Insightful and extensively researched, in the 1950s explores the differing mythologies of the Maronite, Druze and Sunni communities that led to a brief but brutal clash in Lebanon in 1958. This quickly escalated into a full-blown national crisis, which saw US Marines landing on Beirut shores. This polemical and thought-provoking work offers a fresh perspective on a period in Lebanese history often seen as the product of international friction between pan-Arab nationalism and the growing threat to Western hegemony during the Cold War. Kanaan argues that it was the centuries-old cultural, political and religious tensions in the region that led to civil conflict: each community constructed a 'history' of Lebanon to justify their own ends, and in so doing helped to precipitate a national crisis. in the 1950s is a fascinating overview of the interpretations surrounding the 'historical' evolution of the various communities that helped shaped Lebanon's vulnerable and volatile infrastructure, and what the US Department of Defence referred to as 'like war but not war' - a clash that was to have repercussions throughout the region for decades to follow.

The demonisation of pan-Arab nationalism

Although the denigration and misrepresentation of pan-Arab nationalism existed long before recent attempts to portray Saddam Hussein’s regime as exceptionally heinous, threatening and a major source of terrorism, the demonisation of this profoundly important and evolving political force has been given further impetus by the imperative to justify current US Middle Eastern policy. The fallacies that inform reductionist and hostile approaches to pan-Arabism, including the assumption that it is inherently racist and totalitarian, are here dissected and contextualised, and the evolution of pan-Arab nationalist thought is illuminated in the process.

The Fadhil Al-Jamali Government in Iraq, 1953–54

In July 1958, a group of army officers led by Abd al-Karim Qassem and Abd al-Salam Arif staged a revolution in Iraq which put an end to the Hashemite monarchy and the ruling social class. This revolution was the crest of the radical-nationalist-revolutionary wave which had arisen in the Arab world in the 1950s, and which put an end to the conservative regimes, elites and ruling classes in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, and brought the new socio-political forces to power in those countries. Between 1954 and 1958, the radical-nationalist political forces in those countries, of which the most cohesive were the 'Free Officers' regime in Egypt and the Ba'ath Party in Syria, adopted and integrated into their nationalist concepts, each at its own pace, a leftist orientation and terminology and neutralist trends with regard to the interbloc Cold War. The rise of these political forces and their ideological trends expressed the rising social force constituted by the westernized modern middle stratum, which had formed the basis for the expansion of pan-Arab nationalism since the 1930s. In the 1950s, when revolutionary nationalist regimes arose in Egypt and nationalist-radical and leftist-revolutionary trends and organizations in other Arab states, Iraq was still ruled by a conservative monarchy, with its leading group of senior politicians from the conservative ruling class. Iraq became the flagship of the alliance with the west; at the same time, the new radical forces in the Arab states viewed it as the symbol of conservative and antirevolutionary reaction and submission vis-a-vis Britain.1 The Iraqi-Egyptian competition for hegemony in the Fertile Crescent and the Arab world now gained a new dimension: that of an ideological-social struggle between revolutionary Egypt, which had adopted a neutralist orientation in the international arena and had begun a rapprochement with the USSR since 1955, and conservative Iraq, which was identified with the western bloc. During Fadhil al-Jamali's term of office as Prime Minister of Iraq, between 17 September 1953 and 29 April 1954, a last attempt was made by the senior politicians and bureaucrats of the conservative ruling class, who understood that, in order to survive, the regime would have to undergo a controlled process of socio-economic and political change and reform, as a means of halting the political unrest among the westernized middle stratum and the poorer

The Islamization of the Palestinian‐Israeli conflict: the case of Hamas

'The Palestinian cause is not about land and soil, but it is about faith and belief. This statement by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat almuqawama al-Islamiyya, or Hamas, its acronym) reflects an important development in the Arab-Israeli conflict, that of Islamizing it. Taking Clifford Geertz's definition of religion as a symbolic structure that generates meanings for people, a world view capable of providing answers to human problems, and an ethos telling people how they should act,2 the Islamization of the conflict, then, entails several consequences: a certain conceptualization of the conflict's causes and sources through religious-Islamic lenses; a perception of the desirable solution; and the provision of the motivation and justification for a specific mode of conduct in order to achieve that goal. The Arab-Israeli conflict has gone through several phases, each adding a different dimension to it. It began as a conflict between two national movements - Zionism and Palestinian nationalism - which claimed possession of one land, but since the 1936 Palestinian rebellion it came to encompass the various Arab states. From the 1950s it was perceived as a struggle between Israel and pan-Arab nationalism, which regarded Israel as a bridgehead of western imperialism, designed to splinter Arab territorial integrity and prevent Arab unity. In addition, it became an arena of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. The decline of panArabism and the growing power and legitimacy of the territorial states in the Middle East have transformed the conflict from a zero-sum game between rival national movements into a conflict between states, subjected to the rules of raison d'etat, and, therefore, capable of being managed or resolved. The Islamization of the conflict, on the other hand, portrays it as a battle between two rival religions, Islam and Judaism, or between two opposing absolutes. The religious idiom has always played an important role in the evolution of Palestinian nationalism and in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In the past, however, it was mostly the nationalist Palestinian elites - the notables during the British Mandate and the Fatah movement since the early 1960s - that employed Islamic symbols and themes in order to mobilize popular support for the national cause, whose aims were largely political

Faisal's Pan‐Arabism, 1921–33

From the Sharifian revolt of 1916 onwards Faisal's personal and dynastic ambitions were inextricably interwoven with the evolution and misfortunes of the pan-Arab movement in the Fertile Crescent. The long-term Hashemite ambition had been to bring Hejaz, Syria, Palestine and Iraq, territorial fragments, resulting from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire under the rule of their house in some form of federated state. But this goal was soon to be thwarted, and the former Ottoman provinces were divided under European Mandatory control. Faisal's short-lived administration in Damascus, although a significant catalyst in the propagation of pan-Arab nationalism, was also an instructive lesson as to the limitations which constrained the achievement of unity. In his sayings and speeches in Syria, Faisal was an exponent of an embryonic perception of pan-Arab nationalism.1 Moreover, his eviction from Damascus by the French in July 1920, and his subsequent installation in Baghdad at the head of a British-sponsored administration, did not bring to an end his yearning for his old capital in which he was first proclaimed King and for presiding over a larger Arab state which would include Iraq, Syria and perhaps other parts of the Fertile Crescent.2 Faisal's pan-Arabist policy was motivated by a variety of complex and intertwining factors of personal and dynastic ambitions together with ideological, geopolitical, economic and domestic considerations. To begin with, it is highly likely that Iraq's vociferous nationalism and pan-Arabism derived from the crucial problem that the Sunni Arabs were a minority in the country. J.J. Malone observes that

Pan-Arab Nationalism: The Ideological Dream as Compelling Force

The dream of pan-Arab nationalism - the idea that all Arabs could and must be united in a single state - has had an effect on Middle East history as compelling as that of Marxism on modern Europe. While both ideologies had lost appeal by the 1990s, that of pan-Arab nationalism continued to exercise an intellectual hegemony far in excess of that parallel utopian philosophy in Europe. Whereas in Europe, nationalism focused predominantly on the individual nation-state, the nation in the Middle East was supposed to incorporate all Arabs; existing states were merely shards of the whole. Inasmuch as the Arabs chose a European model, it was the unifications of Italy and Germany. Identity was believed destined to create a state rather than the state consolidating a new identity. This gap between reality and ideology was a major factor shaping the turmoil and seeming political perversity of the modern Middle East. Arab politicians and states engaged in constant battle; relations with the West were largely conditioned on the regional competition. Some leaders were reluctant participants in this game, pressured by foreign Arab rivals, domestic enemies, or fear of their own people's passions; others chased Arab leadership out of conviction or ambition. The root motive of this restlessness was the perception that something was unacceptably wrong with the world. Arab and Islamic societies were weaker and poorer than those in the West, though they considered themselves superior. Their centuries-long decline left them asking, as in the title of a 1930s article by Shakib Arslan, 'Why are Moslems Lagging Behind the Christians?' Arslan believed in panIslam, seeing Moslem unity as the answer to Western predominance. His brother, Adil, became a pan-Arab activist, believing that all Arabs must unite under a single government. Both men were struggling with the same paradox.