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Pan-Arabism Causes Conflict in the Middle
East
by Efraim Karsh

About the author: Efraim Karsh is a professor and
director of Mediterranean studies at King’s College at the University of London.
He is a coauthor of Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle
East.
Since its formation in the wake of World War I, the
contemporary Middle Eastern system based on territorial states has been under
sustained assault. In past years, the foremost challenge to this system came
from the doctrine of pan- Arabism (or qawmiya), which sought to eliminate the
traces of Western imperialism and unify the Arab nation, and the associated
ideology of Greater Syria (or Suriya al-Kubra), which stresses the territorial
and historical indivisibility of most of the Fertile Crescent. Today, the
leading challenge comes from Islamist notions of a single Muslim community (the
umma).
http://www.bookrags.com/researchtopics/the-middle-east/sub4.html

[Analysis] Peace will prevail when economic, social and cultural rights are granted to all …

The Middle East… conflicts…

For example:

* the Israel and [so called] “Occupied Territories” (Palestine) issue

* the conflict between Hamas and the Fatah; the Iraq conflict

* the conflict in Afghanistan

* conflicts within Saudi Arabia

* the security concerns, especially the nuclear threat, that Ahmadinajad’s Iran poses

* the Kurdish situation with serious discrimination from Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq with very limited support from any powers

* the Lebanon conflict

* the rise of Islamic militancy in Egypt and Algeria

* the suppression of any opposition in Saudi Arabia and most of Middle East countries

*
the spread of fundamentalist Islam — Wahabbi style — and the attempt
to suppress any modern civil secular democratic voices in the Middle
East region

* and not to forget the problems in Sudan where civilians are being massacred in Darfur by the government and the military.

[...]
Islam is at the center of all social order and of the moral and
intellectual values of Middle Eastern Muslims. In fact, it is the
official religion in most Arab and Islamic countries. Considering
Arabism and Islam as synonyms embodies discrimination against various
ethnic and religious groups in the Middle East. [...]

Conclusion

Most
regimes in Middle East are authoritarian, if not dictatorships, ruling
for decades by fear or reward. The elites who rule in Middle East
countries used religious faith with ideology of nationalism for
blinding people and controlling them … conflicts in the Middle East
all look different, but the real cause root is related to human rights
abuses.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=&no=383905&rel_no=1

The Cross and the River: Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Nile - Haggai Erlich - 2002 - Political Science - [p. 174]
1987); “Red Sea Politics and Its Implications on Ethiopia” … Egyptian influence on Sudanese politics… and so on… Egypt had always wanted to destabilize Ethiopia”… so  that it would not be able to attend to the Nile; the Egyptians used Islam, Pan-Arabism, imperialism, and “reaction” to undermine Ethiopia’s revolution. …
http://books.google.com/books?ct=result&id=mhCN2qo43jkC&dq=the+cross+and+the+river+by+Haggai+Erlich+-+2002+-+Political+Science&ots=yTRua4mmIj&pg=PP9&lpg=PP9&sig=ACfU3U01RVvnrfbgM728GB1Q6tuI9bxFOg&q=page+174#PPA174 ,M1

JSTOR: From Ottomanism to Arabism: The Origin of an Ideology  Islam was as much the center of Arabism as it was of Ot- tomanism. Yet Arabism and Ottomanism were something more than recrudescences of religious bigotry …
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6705(196107)23%3A3%3C378%3AFOTATO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5

Arab Nationalism Run Rampant at Middlebury

By Franck Salameh

August 18, 2006

At Middlebury College’s Arabic Summer School, where I recently taught Arabic, students were exposed to more than intensive language instruction. Inside the classroom and across campus, administrators and language teachers adhered to a restrictive Arab-nationalist view of what is generically referred to as the “Arab world.” In practice, this meant that the Middle East was presented as a mono-cultural, exclusively Arab region. The time-honored presence and deep-rooted histories of tens of millions of Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, Jews, Maronites, and Armenians–all of whom are indigenous Middle Easterners who object to an imputed “supra-Arab” identity–were dismissed in favor of a reductionist, ahistorical Arabist narrative. Those who didn’t share this closed view of the Middle East were made to feel like dhimmi–the non-Muslim citizens of some Muslim-ruled lands whose rights are restricted because of their religious beliefs.

Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: A World Survey - by Willem Adriaan Veenhoven, Winifred Crum Ewing … - 1975 - Discrimination Case studies… Page 88
After the 186 Syrian massacres, the Christians had tried to promote an Arab nationalism… irritated the Muslims… Thanks to the theologians of Al Azhar, the two movements, antagonistic at first, fused into Islamic pan-arabism. Today it is clear that Islam and Arabism, are inseparable terms and that in fact, pan-arabism is synonymous with the cultural social and politica rebirth of Islam… a true Arab must be Muslim. As long as modern Egypt will proclaim itself to be “essentially an Arab and Muslim land” uncertainty will continue to weigh on the Copts, the only remaining native religious minority after the forced departure of eighty thousand Jews..
When Nasser came to power, Egypt resolutely turned its face towards Arabism …became its staunchest champion and Cairo proclaimed Islamic unity pursued an active policy of pan-arabism which identified Islam with Arabism. The Precarious situation of the minorities became even ore acute. Was it possible to be a Christian and an Arab?

http://books.google.com/books?id=tIfYPppdbeYC&pg=PA88

Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: Page 89
… invariable: since Muhammed was an Arab and the sacred Koran was revealed in Arabic, only a Muslim could identify fully with Arabism.

http://books.google.com/books?id=tIfYPppdbeYC&pg=PA89

Radical Islam in Egypt and Jordan: In Egypt And Jordan - Page 169
by Nachman Tal - History - 2005 - 281 pages
The Six Day War ended the violent, subversive threats (to Jordan) of Nasserite pan- Arabism

http://books.google.com/books?id=PMZlKb_93AgC&pg=PA169

A Diary of Four Years of Terrorism and Anti-Semitism: 2000-2004 - Page 249
by Robert R. Friedmann - Political Science - 2005 - 633 pages
Now a new phase is evident in the nationalization of Israeli Arabs…
This latest development points out the danger that Israel is facing from inside, as well as the danger of Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism which are forces that are not easily –if at all– changeable. And similar threats are aimed at the US.

http://books.google.com/books?id=UBavSQq-2tEC&pg=PA249

Palestinian racism exposed - The civilian targets are selected on a racist basis all Jews are fair game, and if a non-Jew is killed, that is an unfortunate accident. …
http://www.likud.nl/extr312.html

The Palestinians’ genocide campaign The civilian targets are selected on a racist basis - all Jews are fair game, and if a non-Jew (Arab) is killed, that is an unfortunate accident. …
http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/3533.htm

Are the Israeli Arabs a Trojan Horse… The P.L.O. and its leader, Arafat.. a macro concept of “Pan Arabism,” espousing the idea of a “Greater Palestine” in which every Arab is considered to be an integral part of a territorial dream… Their “liberation” means first of all the espousing of a Palestinian identity and national consciousness. After all they, they have loyalty to their brothers and sisters in the West Bank and Gaza or in the U.N. refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria. They also have loyalty to the great idea of Pan Arabism.

http://www.jewishpost.com/archives/news/are-the-israeli-arabs-a-trojan-horse.html

BISH-ARABISM COULD be defined as a radical and rapid shift among Israeli Arabs - especially their representatives in the Knesset - from relative moderation to extremism, spearheaded by Azmi, who himself went from being an advocate of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Israel to a preacher against Israel’s existence.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152783641&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

In maps, textbooks, lectures, and other teaching materials used in the instruction of Arabic, Israel didn’t exist, and the overarching watan ‘Arabi (Arab fatherland) was substituted for the otherwise diverse and multi-faceted “Middle East.” Curious and misleading geographical appellations, such as the “Arabian Gulf” in lieu of the time-honored “Persian Gulf,” abounded. Syria’s borders with its neighbors were marked “provisional,” and Lebanon was referred to as a qutr (or “province”) of an imagined Arab supra-state.

Nor was the Arabic school’s narrow definition of Middle Eastern culture restricted to the classroom. Alcohol was prohibited during school events and student parties, and although a school official claimed the ban reflected Middlebury’s campus policy, beer and wine flowed freely during cookouts and gatherings organized by the German, French, and Spanish schools. Banning alcohol is a matter of Islamic practice and personal interpretation–not accepted behavior throughout the Middle East–and reflected the Arabic school’s conflation of Arabic with Islamic.
Similarly, the Arabic school’s dining services conformed to the halal dietary restrictions of Islam, an act implying that all Arabic speakers are Muslims, and that all Muslims are observant; yet less that 20 percent of the Arabic school community was Muslim. No such accommodations were made for Jewish students who kept kosher, even though they outnumbered the Muslims.

Arab nationalism was also evident in the school’s official posture toward America’s national holidays. The Arabic school was alone among Middlebury programs to ignore Fourth of July festivities. Worse, visiting faculty from the Middle East cold-shouldered older students sporting the closely cropped hair, courteous manners, and discipline suggesting membership in the U.S. armed forces. Most students and faculty avoided contact altogether with those dubbed hukuma (government) or jaysh (army).

Such attitudes and practices aren’t confined to Middlebury. A former student of mine who recently took a summer Arabic course at Georgetown University relates that one of her professors, an otherwise excellent language instructor, refused to allow the word “Israel” to be uttered in class. And his bigotry wasn’t confined to the Jewish state: during a class discussion on nationalism, my former student argued that “many Lebanese did not think of themselves as Arabs.” The instructor’s response: “while they might say that, it’s just politics, because all Lebanese people know on the inside that they are indeed Arabs.”

Arabism flies in the face of historical fact. Ethnic minorities in Lebanon, as throughout the Middle East, have suffered at the hands of Arabs since the Arab-Islamic invasions in the early Muslim period. Of the efforts of Arab regimes and their ideological supporters in the West to de-legitimize regional identities other than Arab, Walid Phares, a well-known professor of Middle East studies, has written: “[The] denial of identity of millions of indigenous non-Arab nations can be equated to an organized ethnic cleansing on a politico-cultural level.” This tradition of culturally suppressing minorities is the wellspring of the linguistic imperialism regnant at Middlebury’s Arabic Summer School.

Yet healthier models for language instruction are easy to find. In the Anglophone world, Americans, Irish, Scots, New Zealanders, Australians, Nigerians, Kenyans, and others are native English-speakers, but not English. Can anyone imagine an English language class in which students are assumed to be Anglican cricket fans who sing “Rule Britannia,” post maps showing Her Majesty’s empire at its pre-war height, and prefer shepherd’s pie and mushy peas? Yet according to the hyper-nationalists who run Middlebury’s Arabic language programs, all speakers of Arabic are Arabs–case closed.

A leading Arabic language program shouldn’t imbue language instruction with political philosophy. It should instead concentrate on teaching a difficult language well–on promoting linguistic ability, not ideological conformity. Academics should never intellectualize their politics and then peddle them to students under the guise of scholarship. Those who do may force a temporary dhimmitude on their student subjects, but in the end they only marginalize their field and themselves.

This marginalization has never been clearer than it is today, when Middle East studies scholars are depressingly consistent in their condemnation of American policy in the region… Arabist orthodoxy…

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/08/arab_nationalism_run_rampant_a.html

Since they caused both at once, the historical synonymity of Islam and Arabism was created, and even if this identification is considered wrong in theological terms, it became the de facto reality. As a Muslim of Indian-Pakistani origins, Fatah sees the blending of Islam and Arabism as the distortion of the former, and his words echo the sense of many non-Arab Muslims that Arabs consider them to be “second-rate” Muslims.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1028326.html

the Baathist parties in Syria and Iraq sprang
from the same fascist European roots
http://discardedlies.com/entry/?2272_a-pretext-not-a-cause

Arab imperialism
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2891095/Arab-imperialism

ARAB MUSLIM  RACISM  TODAY
http://www.truthandgrace.com/muslimracism.htm

Arab racism
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.religion.islam/2006-09/msg00360.html

On September 18 (2007), Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV labeled U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a “black snake.”

http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/2930.htm

Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader - uses racial epithet against Barack Obama latimes ^ | Nov 20, 2008 Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader uses racial epithet against Barack Obama Los Angeles Times - Nov. 20, 2008 In a video, Ayman Zawahiri says the president-elect is ‘the direct opposite of honorable black Americans’ and says Obama, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are ‘house Negroes.

http://latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-house-slave20-2008nov20,0,1727083.story

As a wave of pan-Arabism swept the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, the Syrian government decided in 1962 to strip thousands of Kurds of their citizenship. The method: a census supposedly designed to root out “alien infiltrators” from Turkey. If a Kurd could not prove residency in Syria since 1945, he or she lost Syrian citizenship. This fate befell 120,000 Kurds.
Today over 225,000 Kurds in Syria are designated as “foreigners”, out of a total Kurdish population of around 1.5 million. The Baath Party launched an official Arabization campaign in 1963 that began to stamp out Kurdish street names, Kurdish publications, and even Kurdish personal names.

http://www.ordoesitexplode.com/me/2005/10/_over_one_milli.html

The Bullets of ‘Urubah
“I saw him without a gun, shooting at me, and his
bullets pierced me just like all the other bullets.”
Rashid al-Daif, Passage to
Dusk
Two days ago I had a conversation with a Syrian friend, whom I will call Saleem, about the merrits of “Arabist” or Arab nationalist governance. Saleem, being from Syria and having gone through the Ba’thi nationalist school system, for the most part defended the idea that Arabism is positive, particularly for Arabs. “Why shouldn’t the Arabs have a country? If we are all Arabs, why should we not all have the same country, like Italy or Spain?” Saleem asked me. My response to this was, What about the people that live with you who are not Arabs? And why should ethnicity be the basis for this “country”? “Because Arabs are one nation!” I was told hotly. “We should be free from outside aggression like Zionism and colonialism,” he continued. The last question I was able to ask Saleem was “What do you mean? We are free from those things…, the only aggression is against Arabs by Arab dictators,” Saleem’s response was, “Better an Arab than a dog for that.”

http://fashadoo.blog.com/236986/

NGO report on caste-like discrimination against “Al-Akhdam” people in Yemen, ….. drums “to talk” about oppressed lives, the hope for a life in dignity, …

http://www.idsn.org/tekst/developments.htm

In Yemen there exists a caste-like system that keeps Al-Akhdam social group as the … Even though overt racial oppression is no longer permissible by law, …

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Caste_system

fatalistic and encourages people to tolerate the horrible oppression …. They are known as “Al Akhdam” — the servants. Set apart by their African features, …

http://www.india-forum.com/forums/index.php?act=Print&client=wordr&f=2&t=1658

discrimination against the Al-Akhdam people is a practiced social reality in …. Movement against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism

http://www.idsn.org/Documents/pdf/Press_release_Yemen.pdf

Int’l Movement against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), … “In Yemen, the Al-Akhdam in a socially condemned group engaged in disposal of …
http://www.franciscansinternational.org/docs/statement.php?id=464

social and economic exclusion of the akhdam seems to continue as a hereditary trait
http://books.google.com/books?id=beJP_BOIhEcC&pg=PA224

Human Rights Index of United Nations Documentsc) persistent reports of de facto discrimination against descent-based, culturally distinct communities, among others, the Al-Akhdam …
http://www.universalhumanrightsindex.org/hrsearch/search.do;jsessionid=06F9DC61E26648B5AF4F8E82BF292EB6?countries=176&accessType=country&regionCountry=country&orderBy=category&lang=en&currentPage=9

In Yemen, there is a minority of people with dark complexion called al-Akhdam. Historically speaking, their presence in Yemen has been a result of the Ethiopian pre- Islam invasion in 525 BC. Settling down in Yemen and throughout the years have adapted a life style in which they practice many trades especially folklore dancing, handicrafts, cleaning and some other free trades. Unofficial statistics show that the population of this minority reaches 500,000 inhabitants living in Sana’a, Shabowa, Lahj, Abyan, Aden and al-Hudaida…
they complain from the harassment that al-Akhdam females suffer by the local men who find weddings an opportunity to do so with pretty dancers or singers.
Demographic distribution of al-Akhdam in the suburbs is defined according to the tribes. For every tribe has its own Akhdam group of men and women. This group knows its limits and can not cross the red lines between them and the tribe they are living with.
In the cities this trend is almost extinct because in most weddings al-Akhdam’s artistic services have been substituted with that of the locals, by this depriving the Akhdam of one source of income.
Recently, al-Akhdams have started to become relatively politically active, and in the democratic environment and multi-party system, they have decided to form a political party of their own calling it “Free Blacks Society” whose sole intention is to defend their rights and demand their needs to be fulfilled enhancing by that their living.
http://www.yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=669&p=culture&a=1

Minority Report: Yemen’s Akhdam “Out-Castes”
They have lived in Yemen for well over a thousand years. They are Arabic-speaking Muslims. And yet they are Yemen’s great outcasts. Meet the Akhdam.
http://www.ordoesitexplode.com/me/2005/11/minority_report.html

UN COMMITTEE ON THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, Yemen, 2006

The Committee is deeply concerned at the persistent reports of de facto
discrimination against descent-based, culturally distinct communities, among others, the Al-Akhdam. The Committee is particularly concerned about discrimination that interferes with or impairs the enjoyment of their economic, social and cultural rights (arts. 2 (2) and 5).
In light of its general recommendation 29, the Committee recommends that the State party develop and put into action a national strategy with the participation of members of affected communities, including special measures to be adopted in accordance with article 2 (2) of the Convention, in order to eliminate discrimination against members of marginalized and vulnerable descent-based groups. In particular, the Committee recommends that the State party develop legislation and practice prohibiting all discriminatory practices based on descent in employment, housing and so as to ensure equal access to health care and social security services for members of affected communities, in particular the Al-Akhdam.
http://www.cohre.org/store/attachments/UN%20Committee%20Elimination%20Racial%20Discrimination%20Concluding%20Observations.doc

The study deals with a case of extreme social practices of cruelty and violent socio-economic exclusion of “Al-Akhdam”, a minority social group
http://www.law.emory.edu/ihr/huda.html

Languishing at the Bottom of Yemen’s Ladder - New York Times Set apart by their African features, the group known as “Al Akhdam” form a kind of hereditary caste in Yemen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/world/middleeast/27yemen.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

racial discrimination in the Arab world … Yemeni paper Al-Tagheer …the paper had space to tackle another serious social ill in Yemeni society: racial discrimination. The celebrated Yemeni poet Ali Al-Maquarri warned that Yemen’s blacks, pejoratively called Al-Akhdam (servants), are ill- treated and suffer a fate far worse than slavery and that they have to contend with systematic racial discrimination. His novel “Black tastes, black odours”, was received with much critical acclaim in his native Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world. Al-Maquarri’s views, the paper said, will hopefully prompt others — media workers, writers and human rights activists — in the Arab world to be more sensitised to the cause of blacks.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/920/pr2.htm

Discrimination Against Al-Akhdam People in Yemen …

http://www.mahalo.com/Caste_System

Islamic Voodoos (Part 1) :: Faith Freedom
International :: Islam’s life blood is Arabism, precisely, Bedouinism. Once non Arab Muslims eschew this forced Arabism on them Islam will wither away from
their society. …
http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1572

Nasser’s totalitarian ideology of Pan-Arabism, the
forerunner of today’s Islamism…
http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=42286

The Problem With Darfur’s Muslims - Opinion - Arutz Sheva
(”Arabism and Pan-Arabism in Sudanese Politics Journal of Modern African … of North
Africa) is mostly about Arab racism and chauvinism, pure and simple , …
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7620

Good News From Europe and the US -
Don’t let the Arabist/anti-Semitic
taint and news blackouts in the media fool you…
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/3252

TV network Al-Arabiya, on its Web site, solicited readers’ responses to the
attacks. Several expressed happiness, with comments such as “Allahu Akbar,
thanks be to God,” “More power to al Qaeda leader Osama (bin Laden),” and “What
did you expect? This is only a response to the what the British government has
done to the group regardless of which group it is.”
In response, these notes
were posted: “To the heroes of Arabism and Jihad, since you are sparing no
method to attack the West and you gloat as you try to kill the largest number of
civilians. How would you like it if the West relieves itself of your headache by
hitting you with one of its nuclear weapons. It takes only minutes and then
there will be no heroes, no men and no shish kebab.”
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/08/london.muslims/index.html

Baath Party is a mishmash of socialism and Arabism.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/21/se.13.html

What is the ideology behind Saddam Hussein’s (former) regime?

“The Ba’ath ideology mixes pan-Arabism with admiration of Mussolini and
Hitler, some ideas of state socialism and the notion of an Arab supremacy which
will be realized after the Arabs have liberated themselves from foreign - that
means mainly Jewish - influence and British and American imperialism. Ba’athism
is strongly anti-communist and anti-imperialist, and it is anti- Semitic from
its beginning. Everything in Iraq is explained through this huge conspiracy
theory against the Arabs, in general, and Iraq, in particular. Iraq is thought
to be the greatest Arab nation and the natural leader of Arab unity.”

So Iraq sees itself as the center of the Arab world?

“Yes, the leader of Arab unity. Saddam Hussein dreams of ruling a united
Arab nation that would become a superpower confronting East and West. Iraqi
children are taught in kindergarten that they have to be strong Arab
fighters.”

Is Iraqi (Saddam’s) Ba’athism Islamist?

“Pan-Arabism has always said that Mohammed is the forefather of pan-Arabism
and that Islam was spoiled when it crossed the borders of the Arab world to Iran
and Turkey. The task now is to `re-animate’ the real Islam that was taught by
Mohammed as an Arab ideology. Especially during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iraq had
to face the Iranian revolution, they loaded their own ideology with Islamic
content. The Iranians and the Zionists, they said, are part of a 2,000-year-old
plot to smash Iraq and divide the Arabs. `We are fighting for the real Islam’
the regime said, not the kind of spoiled Islam that Iran represents. I think it
was a mistake for the Americans to believe, as they did, that Iraq was a
stronghold against Islam.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=215930

To this day, Islam has retained its imperial ambitions. The dream of regional and world domination has remained very much alive, despite the destruction long ago of the last great Muslim empire, which has left the Islamic caliphate vacant. The 20th century doctrine of pan-Arabism (exemplified by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser), though secular in appearance, has been effectively Islamic in its ethos, worldview, and imperialist vision. Karsh quotes Nuri Said, longtime prime minister of Iraq and a prominent early champion of pan-Arabism: “Although Arabs are naturally attached to their native land, their nationalism is not confined by boundaries. It is an aspiration to restore the great tolerant civilization of the early caliphate.”
http://www.jewishtimes-sj.com/news/2008/0815/columns/018.html

Attacks on Jews by Arabs in Concordia University the “centre of militant Arabism in Canada”
http://www.hfienberg.com/kesher/2002_09_08_kesher_archive.html

Doing Zionism - Resources and articles on Israeli Arabs
There was a certain degree of anti-Jewish rhetoric present in these protests. … Once the Israeli Arabs had re-encountered their Palestinian brethren in …
http://www.wzo.org.il/doingzionism/resources/expand_subject.asp?id=151

So much for the good Israeli Arabs | Jewish Journal
Sam - The word Ultra Orthodox is an invention of the anti Jewish media that seeks ….. Israeli Arabs feel the same denial of Israel as a Jewish State as do …
http://www.jewishjournal.com/forums/viewthread/1367/P75/

The rise of ‘Bish-Arabism’ | Features | Jerusalem Post BISH-ARABISM COULD be defined as a radical and rapid shift among Israeli Arabs - especially their representatives in the Knesset - from relative moderation …

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152783641&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Similarly, the assorted versions of pan-Arabism Nasserism, Baathism were seen as alternatives to Islam, when in fact they were not alternatives at all. They merely displayed, for quite specific and local reasons, an emphasis on Uruba or Arabdom that was explicable given the impoverished state of the Islamic world and the fact that there were local stumbling blocks to pan-Islamism (including the lack of financial wherewithal). In Turkey Kemalists were in control; in Iran there was the Shah, trying in his maladroit way to emphasize the pre-Islamic past. Pan-Arabism was a version of pan-Islamism, a subset, which at the time seemed to be as much as one could hope for. Nasser or Saddam Hussein could dream of being King of the Arabs, but the idea of a much bigger operation, especially since for both Nasser and Saddam Hussein the most dangerous political opposition was mosque-based (the Muslim Brotherhood for Nasser, the Shia clerics for Saddam Hussein), was out of the question.
http://newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm?blog_id=5685

The Myth of the Jewish Race
by Raphael Patai, Jennifer Patai - 1989 - History - 456 pages
In 1960 the French Comite dAction de Defense Democrat ique published a pamphlet titled Racism and Pan-Arabism: A Conspiracy against Human Liberties, …
this is followed by a paper by Shlomo Friedrich on Pan-Arabism: A New Racist Menace? ..
http://books.google.com/books?id=Xt7f6WBEP0EC&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187

…fascism outside Europe has become a possiblity and, in some cases, a reality. The Iraqi & Syrian regimes have pronounced fascist features… both, the Iraqi & Syrian leadership belongs to the Ba’th Party, an elitist, pan-Arabist group that arose in the 1930s partly as a result of the rise of fascism in Europe.
http://books.google.es/books?id=fWggQTqioXcC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162

The Middle East - Page 89

by Library Information and Research Service - Middle East - 1999
After Sayyid Jamal, in Arabic countries and especially in Egypt, many
individuals were found who, by leaning on racism, Arabism and pan-Arabism, …
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ma1tAAAAMAAJ&q=arabism

A New Road for France - Page 30
by Jacques Soustelle, Benjamin Protter - Political Science -
1965 - 278 pages
Israel and French Algeria were… two barriers against which the totalitarian wave.. embodied by Nasser… a dictatorial pseudo-state type was created in Algeria, firmly tied to a single party, dominated by
the racist ideology of a Nasser-type pan-Arabism and by the revolutionary fanaticism of the Ulemas…Algeria engaged itself in this fundamental domain on the road traced by Nasser’s Pan-Arabism and that the Christian and Jewish minority has been victim of a new
discrimination [...] arabism, they forget or pretend to forget, that Black Africa never knew more ferocious slave-drivers nor more violent destroyers than the Arab adveturers whose worthy successor is Gamal Abdel Nasser… the enlightened spokesmen of human fraternity and peace are
symbolized by Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who assiduously prepares, with the Nazis around him, the revenge of Himmler and Eichmann against Israel.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vPcAAAAAMAAJ&q=arabism+nasser

Violence, Political Culture & Development in Africa - Page 98
by Preben Kaarsholm - Social Science - 2006 - 208 pages
… and the racist ideology of ‘Arabism’ aligned with Islam
that a succession of
governments in Khartoum
had adopted in fighting the wars in the South. …
http://books.google.com/books?id=G-pVrSSxU7IC&pg=PA98

Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle
East - Page 213

by James P. Jankowski, I. Gershoni - History - 1997 - 372
pages
… of the Algerian Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) uses the 1967
defeat as proof that Arabism, being a form of racism, cannot elicit a sense
of community …
http://books.google.com/books?id=f3axNF2GdCkC&pg=PA213

African Politics - Page 84

by P. F. Gonidec - Political Science - 1980 - 367 pages
In the beginning, under the umbrella of Islamism and
subsequently of Arabism,
… This is the ‘anti-racist racism’ of JP Sartre, who has
very well analysed …
http://books.google.com/books?id=4lMcN-EWwTcC&pg=PA84

Racism, Culture, Markets - Page 139
by John Gabriel - Social Science - 1994 - 212 pages
without parallel economic growth… inevitably delivers a
population into some kind of ism, whether it be communism,
fascism or pan Arabism, and weans them away from democracy
http://books.google.com/books?id=wKsxy6lioasC&pg=PA139

Ideology and International Relations in the Modern World - Page
238
by Alan Cassels - Political Science - 1996 - 302 pages
With the exception of Zionism (hardly a Third-World
phenomenon), all the ideologies just discussed - pan-Islam, pan-Arabism and
other anti-Western …stimulated by some degree of racial ‘anti-white’ sentiment
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA238&dq=&id=DkN6M2mvh9EC&output=html

The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq - Page 304
by Brendan O’Leary, John McGarry, Khaled Salih - 2006 - 355 pages
And, if it were ever to become unified, it would be under an Arabist program,
with a racist agenda for Kurds and an Islamist one for non-Muslims and Muslims …
http://books.google.com/books?id=8rnsO3QzVacC&pg=PA304

Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide
de Gérard Prunier - 2005
situation in Darfur a “genocide” in September 2004. Its characteristics-Arabism, Islamism, famine as a weapon of war, mass rape, international obfuscation, and a refusal to look evil squarely in the face-reflect many of the problems of the global South in general and of Africa in particular.Journalistic explanations of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe have been given to hurried generalizations and inaccuracies: the genocide has been portrayed as an ethnic clash marked by Arab-on-African violence, with the Janjaweed militias under strict government control, but neither of these impressions is strictly true. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide explains what lies behind the conflict, how it came about, why it should not be oversimplified, and why it is so relevant to the future of the continent. Gérard Prunier sets out the ethnopolitical makeup of the Sudan and explains why the Darfur rebellion is regarded as a key threat to Arab power in the country-much more so than secessionism in the Christian South. This, he argues, accounts for the government’deployment of “exemplary violence” by the Janjaweed militias in order to intimidate other African Muslims into subservience. As the world watches; governments decide if, when, and how to intervene; and international organizations struggle to distribute aid, the knowledge in Prunier’book will provide crucial assistance.
http://books.google.com/books?id=kVPkluKRKtwC&dq

The Search for Peace and Unity in the Sudan - Page 115
by Francis Mading Deng, Prosser Gifford, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - 1987 - 183 pages
On the other hand, the ruling elite’s attachment to the causes of Arabism and
Islamism, in the narrow racist way they see them, inevitably drives non- Arab …
http://books.google.com/books?id=XNpyAAAAMAAJ&q=arabism+racist&dq=arabism+racist&lr=&hl=en

Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq - Page 154
by Kanan Makiya - 1998 - 323 pages
(First published in 1989, just before the Gulf War broke out, Republic of Fear was the only book that explained the motives of the Saddam Hussein regime in invading and annexing Kuwait. This edition, updated in 1998,…)
…today, nothing can be worse for an Arab than to be acalled a shu’ubi, because the term combines the attributes of a racist invective (most frequently used against non-Muslim minorities and Shi’ites) and the imputation of a treasonous… the Ba’th have used the word in this sense since the 1940s.
The specifically racist connotation…of one’s
faith in Arabism as the measure of identity, can a fully blown racist content be invested in the term…
http://books.google.com/books?id=MBSNs4sIYn0C&pg=PA154

PLAN OF ACTION AGAINST EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT AND OTHERS… what happened in Egypt is the plain and clear manifestation of Arabist hatred of Africans, Arabisms disrespect of Africaness, and naked Racism. …
http://www.sudaneseonline.com/cgi-bin/sdb/2bb.cgi?seq=print&board=50&msg=1137188574&rn=

Israelism defines its borders, respectful of alternative cultures.
Arabism is rogue and misinformed, it believes that all cultures must adopt its ideologies.
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/06/obama-the-self.html

One thing we should do immediately is drop the lazy concept of the Arab street: it means nothing, it doesnt exist. Like most formulations beloved by the left, its an excuse to avoid having to learn anything hard or specific - facts, dates, trade patterns, economic relationships. The Bahraini street has nothing in common with the Ramallah street. The Arab street is as useless a notion as the European street: Americans should compare, for example, France and Belgium with Kuwait and Qatar. Who are the real allies? The difference at Arab League meetings henceforth will be between those members of a moderate, modernizing tendency and a dwindling number of decrepit thug states who prefer to carry on taking refuge in pan-Arabisms perversion of traditional Arab fatalism and celebrating their failure. - Mark Steyn
http://wso.williams.edu/~ljacobso/quotes/ME.shtml

denouncing Pan-Arabism in all its forms of practice as racism, …
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/end-darfur-genocide-21st-century-most-outrageous-crime-against-mankind.html

The Last Chance for Sudan to Exist: Get Out of the Arab League Now …
Pan-Arabism: the Epitome of the most Anti-Human Racism, a Forgery aiming at bestializing the Human Being. An inquisitive approach to the chances of the …
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/9-4-2004-58911.asp

Deep down in Darfur - TLS Highlights - Times Online
Handicapped by the latent Arabist racism of the leadership, which hails, as it always has, almost entirely from Khartoum and the Middle Nile Valley, …
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25346-1886267_4,00.html

Arabists VS Middle East
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2005/04/arabists-vs-the-middle-east.php

…such as pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism which pushed the dilemma to where we … of anti-Persian campaigns and forged the controversial name of Arabian Gulf …

http:/www.strategicsinternational.com/Sem_RASTBEEN.pdf [PDF]

The Arab League as a useless ideological racist Arabist institution has existed only to promote Arabism and Arab racism against colonised non-Arab nations. …
http://www.kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=9285

Islamist and Arabist-racist attitudes, refracted through the honor-shame paradigm, greatly multiplied the scope and duration of the [Arabs vs Israel] conflict, …
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2008/06/22/writing-away-ones-future

OLD STAND-BY ARABIST RACIST
http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/jerusalem/jerusalem74.html

Their grievance is not really Russian imperialism, or the 5 to 10 percent of the West Bank under dispute, or black African encroachment on Arab land, or purported French insensitivity to legitimate Islamic pride, much less an American crusade to harm Muslims.

All these issues and the hundreds of others from the right to build a reactor in Iran to the desire for a semi-autonomous Chechnya in theory could be discussed, argued about, and adjudicated through democratic dialogue.

But that is impossible. For you see, the real problem is the democratic dialogue itself unknown in the Arab Middle East and much of the Islamic world, and a hindrance to both sharia and the pan-Arabist thug with epaulettes and sunglasses. Yet consensual government alone is the key to ending failed statist economies, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, state-controlled media, and tribalism. It alone might stop the self-induced misery and with it the tedious scapegoating of the Jews and America.

Much of the Islamic Middle East continues to blame others for its own induced catastrophe, apparently unaware thanks to the lever of oil it didnt discover, doesnt know how to develop, and uses to intensify rather than alleviate its poverty that its entire culture is becoming an international pariah. Islamic young men on European flights are looked at with distrust; they are not welcome in Russia. China wants

none of them. They are wary of visiting India. Australia learned from Bali. The whole world is watching in disgust.
In short, the suicide bomber, the improvised explosive device, the car bomb, the televised beheading, the wacko fatwa, the sleazy propaganda streamer on the Internet, the new cult of death all cowardly and lethal phenomena these are now the innovations that the world associates with the Middle East in lieu of gene research, car production, or computer breakthroughs. If you look for gender equity in the Middle East, you wont find it in Arab Olympic delegations, Saudi schools, or the Iranian government, but in the opportunity for young women to blow themselves up right beside men. Indeed, killing infidels is the nascent womens-liberation movement of the radical Muslim world.
http://factsofisrael.com/blog/archives/000790.html

…Similarly, the assorted versions of pan-Arabism — Nasserism, Ba’athism — were seen as alternatives to Islam, when in fact they were not alternatives at all. They merely displayed, for quite specific and local reasons, an emphasis on “Uruba” or Arabdom that was explicable given the impoverished state of the “Islamic world” and the fact that there were local stumbling blocks to pan-Islamism (including the lack of financial wherewithal). In Turkey Kemalists were in control; in Iran there was the Shah, trying in his maladroit way to emphasize the pre-Islamic past. Pan-Arabism was a version of pan-Islamism, a subset, which at the time seemed to be as much as one could hope for. Nasser or Saddam Hussein could dream of being King of the Arabs, but the idea of a much bigger operation, especially since for both Nasser and Saddam Hussein the most dangerous political opposition was mosque-based (the Muslim Brotherhood for Nasser, the Shi’a clerics for Saddam Hussein), was out of the question.
http://newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm?blog_id=5685

Saudi Arabia: Asian workers continue to suffer behind closed doors … Amnesty International Report 2008. The state of the world’s human rights …

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE23/033/2000

South Asian workers in Saudi
Rabiya Parekh 4 Apr 06, 03:51 PM Abdullah Al Mutairi has spoken out against an issue which seems to be prevalent in a lot of Middle Eastern countries, but is seldom talked about.

Sunny Hundal writing in Pickled Politics came across his article recently about the poor treatment of migrant workers in the Middle East.

Every year Indians, Pakistanis and other workers from the Indian Sub Continent flock to countries like Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for work as servants and labourers.

But many are treated poorly by their employers in their host countries. According the Abdullah there is a distinct lack of respect for these workers, who often do the jobs that many people don’t like to do themselves.
But the prospect of a steady income and the need to provide for their families in South Asia keeps them there, putting up with bad treatment and poor labour rights.

We really want to hear from people who have family members working out in the Middle East, and in partcular an honest insight to how workers are treated from those who live there.

Why is the treatment of foreign workers so bad in the MIddle East? What is behind it? Have you ever worked there?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/2006/04/south_asian_workers_in_saudi.html

Saturday, July 12, 2008
Saudi Arabia’s legalised racism
A foreign female university professor – let’s call her Hala – teaches in Saudi Arabia. Her elderly parents come to visit - they go for a pilgrimage in the holy sites, then stay a few weeks at their daughter’s.
As Hala goes to the visa office to request a 2-week extension for her mother, the officer in charge tells her it’s okay and she needn’t worry about it, her mother can stay these extra two weeks, no trouble at all.

As the mother goes to the airport, two weeks past her visa – well, it’s not okay. They let the old woman through but confiscate her daughter’s passport (which is illegal, since she technically commited no crime, but since when did that matter in this country?)
The Saudi visa officer denies any involvement and refuses to even talk to Hala, who is consequently sentenced to a 10,000 SAR (3000 USD) fine and deportation. Deportation. No legal grounds are provided for this decision - there wasn’t even a trial or anything. Just arbitrary. The officer in charge was probably upset of her being a single working female — too much for his narrow intellect to fathom.

Only, she’s a good professor, and her university intervenes – not because they care for her, but because they need to keep her.

So, after 18 months - during which her passport remained confiscated and she had to stay in the country - the deportation sentence is lifted; the fine remains.

Poor Hala, unwilling to spend another summer vacation locked inside the country, decides to stop challenging the sentence and pay her unjust fine. The Saudi legal system is so biased against foreigners that fighting it can only lead to a worsening of one’s case.

And this was Hala vs. the State: had it been Hala vs. citizen alpha, she’d probably be in jail on a bogus charge or something.

This is what Saudi Arabia is all about: extorting foreign labour, sucking them dry, then pissing over them
http://travellerwithin.blogspot.com/2008/07/saudi-arabias-legalised-racism.html

Saudi Arabia: Asian and African Witches Will be Hunted Down and “Terminated”… The current witch hunt, aimed mostly at Indian and Africans, appears to be a symptom of the racism inherent in the Arab culture. For centuries, Arabs traded in African slaves, and such slavery continues today, with both African women and Slavic women from the former Soviet Union being forced into prostitution.
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/002298.html

Saudi Arabia: Asian immigrant forced to clean mosques for ’skipping prayers’ Riyadh, 18 Nov. (2008) (AKI) - A Saudi civil court has ordered an Asian immigrant to clean mosques next month during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca after religious police caught him skipping Friday prayers several times, Saudi daily al-Watan reports. The man will have to clean five mosques along the highway into Mecca twice daily for eleven days, the court ruled…
Earlier this month, a judge ordered a young man to memorise part of the Koran and 40 sayings of the Prophet Mohammed as a punishment for appearing in public with a woman who was not a relative.
..
The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is an obligation for all able-bodied Muslims to attend at least once during their lives, provided they can afford it.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=3.0.2720941512

Race, Culture and Difference - Page 273
by James Donald, Ali Rattansi - Social Science - 1992 - 300 pages
Arab racism is such that most Pakistanis would prefer to work in Britain than in
Saudi Arabia for a higher income; racist humiliations
http://books.google.com/books?id=3NZonSikZPcC&pg=PA27

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Selling immigrants into sex slavery …Mar 10, 2008 … Slavery. She came all the way from Eastern Europe to treat her daughter’s asthma . Instead, once in Dubai, the 27-year-old Moldavian woman …

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/03/united-arab-e-1.html

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News - The second coming of Saladin
Arab business elites and the South Asian slaves

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE18Ak01.html

(Even “Dubai for Visitors” publication had to admit and pay attention to it:)
Is there any racism in Dubai? Its big question mark there. According to below article there is something going on in Dubai. This is governement responsibilities to look into this. These asians has developed this country with there hard work and if they cannot be lookaftered then shame on this governement.

http://dubaiforvisitors.com/2007/07/26/racism-in-dubai/

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – ASIA Heaven for money, hell for Asian …13 Sep 2005 … Heaven for money, hell for Asian workers in the United Arab Emirates More than 10 million Asians work in the Emirates in quasi-slave

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=4110

THE ROVING EYE
Dubai lives the post-oil Arab dream
By Pepe Escobar
Jun 7, 2006
DUBAI - Welcome to the ultimate sociopolitical model for the 21st century: a Blade Runner-esque melting pot of neo-liberalism and “subterranean” economy, Sunni Arab Islam and low taxes, souks and artificial islands, a giant warehouse and a tourist paradise, life in the fast lane and post-modern slavery. The model spells out an apolitical, consumer-mad, citizenship-free society.

[...]
It’s fair to argue what distinguishes a citizen from a non-citizen in a state where there’s no democracy at all. The power of Dubai’s absolute ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, could be defined as Genghis Khan-like. But if you’re an immigrant coming from Iran’s theocratic nationalism, India’s bureaucratic nightmare or Pakistan’s barely disguised dictatorship, the last thing you’ll want is an interventionist state. So Deng Xiaoping’s dictum - “to get rich is glorious” - ultimately prevails. Lee Kwan Yew applied it in Singapore - and it worked marvels.

Racism in Dubai - as in the US south - is pervasive, but off-limits to discussion, even as the fragile social pact between citizens and foreign residents, which in essence means “shut up and do your job”, is faltering. A 15% minority could not possibly impose either its language or religion on a cosmopolitan majority - especially when religion is the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Thus (Western and Arab) men can get drunk in licensed bars, pubs and restaurants and (Western only) women can wear bikinis on the beach.

[...]
Meet the slaves
The social pyramid in Dubai is unforgiving. At the base is the average construction worker, inevitably South Asian, either Pakistani or Indian. He’s invisible. But he and his fellow workers now comprise an astonishing 80% of the UAE’s population. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly complained that this archetypal construction worker is never treated like a human being. But the UAE power structure couldn’t care less.

He works a minimum of 12 hours a day in up to 50 degrees, with a half-hour break, six days a week, and earns no more than $150 a month. He lives in a camp, four and sometimes as many as 12 to a 15-square-meter room lost in the dreary al-Quoz industrial suburb. On his day off, exhausted, he watches Bollywood video discs and catches up with news from home in the Deira souk. One night at the Emirates Towers (in a standard room) would consume five months of his salary. He can only come back home to see his family - which gets an average of 50% of his monthly salary - once every two years. If he’s really lucky - or an elderly expat, a former skilled worker - he may eke out a comfortable living as a taxi driver.

He has no rights. Trade unions are banned. If he speaks up, he’s instantly deported. Or, in desperation, he may follow the path of thousands who escaped to massive slums crammed with illegal immigrants in neighboring Sharjah. If she’s a woman and works as a maid or in a hotel, she can be sexually harassed - and there will be no recourse.

Dozens of construction workers died in 2005. Most of these Spidermen of the Gulf simply fell from the huge new towers, as slings and ropes are not exactly high-tech. A worker died of suffocation in Palm Jumeirah, where the local press discovered that many were being fed half a lemon a day working in 45-degree heat. An array of dodgy companies is addicted to delaying payment of salaries - or not paying at all - as well as confiscating passports.

Slightly better off than the South Asians are the Filipinos, some other Southeast Asians and some Eastern Europeans serving - or playing - in bars, restaurants, hotels, the whole tourist, fun-in-the-sun industry.

Well-paid (and white) Westerners - more than 100,000 - live lavishly as engineers, surveyors, managers, analysts, teachers. The overwhelming majority are Anglos - British, Irish, South Africans, Australians. Every major Western and Japanese IT and audio-video giant, as well as every major financial-services company, is based in Dubai.

But there are many constraints even for the well off. If you are a non-UAE national, you can only buy land in designated “free zones”. Foreign companies can only operate by paying a UAE kafeel (sponsor, guarantor) to be their local representative (it is a kafeel who also monopolizes the “import” of foreign workers). Only UAE nationals can work for the government. And education and health care are free only for UAE nationals - certainly not for the South Asians.

Finally, at the top of the pyramid is the al-Maktoum family and its associates, controlling and investing the well of cash derived from oil, exercising total political and social control and building the futuristic version of Arabia based on trade and finance.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HF07Ak01.html

Syrian Liberal Nidhal Na’isa On the West, Pan-Arabism, Islamism, and Al-Jazeera

MEMRI ^ | May 17 2007
Syrian liberal author Nidhal Na’isa began his career in journalism as a teenager, at the government dailies Al-Thawra and Syria Times,(1) but today he is a vocal opponent of the Arab regimes and the pan-Arab ideology, as well as of Islamism and Islamist terrorism. He has written that due to the Islamist “tsunami,” the Middle East could be declared an “intellectual disaster zone”; that if one were to try to sell pan-Arab identity to “the bushmen and the cannibals” they wouldn’t buy it; and that the pan-Arab media is “a harbinger of ill, pain, and destruction.” In contrast, he praises the West for its humanism and its respect for the individual, and writes that, given the current state of affairs in the Arab world, the real question is not “why does the West hate us?” but rather why it does not.

The following are excerpts from some of Nidhal Na’isa’s recent articles:

“We Could Declare [The Middle East] an Intellectual Disaster Zone After the Surging Fundamentalist Tsunami Swept Through”

In an interview published April 23, 2007 on the liberal Arab website Aafaq, Na’isa discussed the Islamist phenomenon:

“The world is swept up in globalization, whereas our unfortunate regions are being swept up everywhere by fundamentalism. We could declare [the Middle East] an intellectual disaster area after the surging fundamentalist tsunami swept through it.

“This is a wave that came after the slaughter, on the debris of the failure and disintegration of the leftist pan-Arab projects, [when] their intellectual hollowness and the superficiality of their proposals… became evident…

“Fundamentalism is a notion that disturbs the sleep of everybody concerned with the present and the future of this region. All of us are fundamentalists, when fundamentalism is taken in the sense of tenacious clinging to [our] opinion and rejection of the other. I see fundamentalism on the faces of all, in their thoughts and proposals. Nobody comes to terms with the other; no one pays attention to anyone else. In my view, this is fundamentalism in its more important and fuller meaning…”

“In Our Totalitarian Societies… Leaving [the Fold of] Collective Thought is Considered Error, Heresy, and Atheism”

When asked about the phenomenon of increasing religiosity in Syria, Na’isa said that it was part of “the spread of the culture of the herd and ‘group’ thinking, which means the negation of the individual and the individual’s importance in creation, development, and originality.”

He continued: “Western civilization was founded on unleashing individual initiative and glorification of individual reason and not collective reason, which is generally emotive and not of sound judgment.

“In our totalitarian societies, the collective ‘I’ prevails over the individual ‘I,’ and all become equals under the podiums of the [Islamic] jurisprudents. Leaving [the fold of] collective thought is considered error, heresy, and atheism…”

Na’isa’s praise for the West does not, however, extend to current U.S. policy in the region, which he feels has been counterproductive and has fed extremism: “Much of the religiosity in our societies is based on the principle ‘not out of love for ‘Ali, but in order to spite Mu’awiya,’ [i.e.] in order to spite the current regimes, and in order to goad George Bush and the U.S., which acts in a reckless, thoughtless, and foolish manner, and, through its policies, increases the strength of this [fundamentalist] current…

“So long as the [Syrian] nationalist opposition forces remain repressed and banned, and religious activity is the sole [kind of activity] permitted and tolerated, many will see in it a shelter for the expression of… their identities as [people who] reject the Arab constellation of despotism…”

The Syrian Media is “A Mongoloid Child, Retarded and Underdeveloped”

In the interview, Na’isa draws a clear distinction between past heroes of resistance to colonialism and those whom the modern Arab media crowns as martyrs:

“It goes without saying, and is clear to anyone with eyes to see, that there is a distinction between [on the one hand] someone who ends a life full of human giving and sacrifice… and who worked for a noble and lofty goal, and [on the other hand] someone with a black history… The lying pan-Arabist, Islamist-propagandist media will never succeed in creating saints and martyrs out of slaughterers, butchers, and hired killers…

“The hypocritical pan-Arab hissing [i.e. the pan-Arab media]… has poisoned our lives and turned them into a cheap lie…. The viper, before it bites, emits a hissing sound, which is a harbinger of ill, pain, and destruction.”

Na’isa said of the Syrian media in particular that it is “a mongoloid child, retarded and underdeveloped.”(2)

“In Truth, I Think That Those Wicked ‘Infidels’ Love Us More Than We Hate Them”

On April 22, 2007, Nidhal Na’isa published an article on the liberal Arab website Elaph titled “Why Don’t They Hate Us?” in which he lampooned the Islamists’ anti-West discourse:

“A great part of the fiery, devout, [Islamic] revivalist discourse… is based on [the claim] that the ‘infidel’ West is our mortal archenemy, that it hates us with the greatest hatred, and that it does not let any opportunity pass for hatching conspiracies and striking at us.

“[It is also based on the claim] that all of the backwardness, misery, deterioration, decline, defeats, and baseness currently present in the Arab and Muslim worlds are due to an uninterrupted flood of machinations on the part of those evil infidels. [The claim is] that they target our religion and our being because they have no religion, and because we are better than them in Allah’s view, and that they envy us for this very reason.

“[The Islamists claim] that we are a great source of concern for [the West], and that we are their sole preoccupation and fear, and that the green [i.e. Islamic] ‘giant’ is ambushing them with its extraordinary capabilities of poverty, hunger, corruption, despotism, ignorance, prisons, delusion, superstitions, and preachers.

“[According to the Islamists, Islam] is, for this reason, the only one capable of destroying Western civilization, defeating it on its home ground, and wiping it out of existence through ‘a few explosive belts’ that do nothing other than kill and target Arab and Muslim children and their innocent blood.

“[They say that] the mother of all decisive [battles] the fateful war with the atheist, sinful infidels passes by way of those innocents, and that if it were not for accursed Israel, wicked America, the infidels, and the descendants of apes and pigs that lie in wait for us night and day, our countries and homelands would be like Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Oslo… When Allah rids us of those wicked, accursed people, we will live in tranquility and bliss, and live happily ever after, and we will have offspring, and girls whom we will dress in chadors, veils, and hijabs.

“But in truth… I think that those wicked ‘infidels’ love us much more than we hate them. If it were not for them, life would be transformed into hell and fire.”

“London Has Become a Safe Haven for Fundamentalists Fleeing the Hell of Middle Eastern Despotism”

“[The West] has contributed greatly through material aid, technical expertise, and advisory assistance to many of the amenities of life we enjoy. Tens of millions of humans have benefited from the West’s achievements in the sciences, and Western universities have opened [their doors] to the multitudes of students arriving from all countries of the world.

“They have granted citizenship and inducements material and other to all of the outstanding, the gifted, and the creative to live in those countries and even to those who were chased out of their own countries. For instance… London has become a safe haven for fundamentalists fleeing the hell of Middle Eastern despotism. They release, from London, their fiery communiqus for the destruction of the infidel West …

“The prophecy has been fulfilled, and [these Islamists in London] have, in fact, become the only group to be redeemed from the inferno of tyranny, the hell of oppression, and the fire of despotism.

“It was the infidel West, for instance, that extracted oil from the Arabian desert, and turned it into a green paradise and expansive oases full of vitality. [In these oases,] various kinds of economic, intellectual, athletic and artistic activities flourish, and conferences and conventions are held to revile the infidel West and to accuse [other Arabs] of treachery, in the intoxicating atmosphere of the heart of the desert.

“If it were not for this massive technological aid, those countries would be living now as [they lived] in the earliest period of that great, time-honored history of theirs, before there was a West and before there were infidels.

“In addition, this infidel West dedicated its utmost efforts and thinking… to the medical sphere, and eliminated many of the contagious, infectious diseases that used to be predominant in the world. And it is this same West that gives [the Arabs] electricity with which to desalinate water…

If the West Were To Reciprocate the Enmity of the Arab Satellite Stations, “It Could Turn Their Lights Off and Send Them Back to the Early Camel Age”

“And it was [the West] that launched satellites ‘that float in the sky’(3) [that made possible] the [Arab] satellite TV stations which show up every day on the [TV] screens, and which sprinkle their unique ‘masterpieces’ over mankind. If the West wanted to, and if it were to act with the same logic of unveiled enmity [as the Arab satellite stations do], it could turn their lights off with one push of a button and send them back to the deep black depths and the Early Camel Age…

“I believe that applying oneself to putting forward all of the overwhelming conclusive arguments concerning the humanism of the West, the loftiness of its endeavors, and the nobility of its intentions, would be… a pointless linguistic digression. The general concept can be summed up by [the fact] that the West has not been grudging in [sharing] its humanism and its civilization with others, and it demands of them only a bit of quiet if there is to be no good faith, recognition, and return of the favor…

“The world has become a narrow lane in a small global village. It listens, follows [developments], thinks, contemplates, and analyzes and it cannot at all fathom the motives and the goals of this hostile and vicious discourse of incitement that some tirelessly market, exploiting their alliance with despotic regimes.

“One painful conclusion can be drawn from all of this… [and it is] that the more logical question… is not ‘why do they hate us?’ if there is indeed some degree of hatred but rather ‘why don’t they hate us?’…(4)

Al-Jazeera Talk Shows as a Window on Arab Society

In an April 15, 2007 article on Elaph.com, Na’isa took issue with those who criticize the popular Al-Jazeera talk show “The Opposite Direction.” In a rather backhanded compliment, he “praises” the confrontational show as an accurate, if pale, reflection of the conflictual state of contemporary Arab society:

“I don’t understand why many criticize ‘The Opposite Direction’… and call it… a cockfight, or a boxing ring, or a dialogue of the deaf.

“All the aforementioned program does is to pass on, through its participants and its unaffected interviews, some random aspects of a head-butting, fragmented Arab reality…

“‘The Opposite Direction’ is a microcosm of the larger ‘opposite directions’ that are to be found in every home, in the street, within every institution, group, and political party, and in every small gathering, even those around a hookah and a backgammon table in a popular caf, or in an out-of-the-way village.

“In fact, relatively speaking, ['The Opposite Direction'] is far less violent than what goes on in reality: the deafness, the anger, the resistance, the mutual shoving and head-butting. It often seems to me as though no one understands the other, and no one wants to listen to the other.

“If Allah, may He be praised and elevated and the fact that he has not done this is [due to] His great wisdom [but] if Allah were to bestow upon us weapons of mass destruction, we would destroy one another down to the last man… And then we could rest, and give tortured humanity a respite from our long and wearying problems, discussions, and talks.

“Hopefully our discussions will remain at the level of the ‘The Opposite Direction’ a ‘bit’ of yelling and vituperation… and will not transform into a deadly hell and tremendous bloodshed…

“So first off, I would like to sincerely thank all of the participants… in this program, because they express, in a true and spontaneous manner, the nature of our societies, their innermost being, without any ‘touchup’… These are our people and our peoples. This is how we are. This is what we have to offer…”(5)

On the Arab Media’s Version of “Arab Identity”

In an April 26 article on Elaph, Na’isa wrote: “The charlatan… propagandistic media glories in the bombastic term ‘Arab identity,’ and it extols it and promotes it as the heavens’ gift to those sinking into a morass of backwardness…

“In truth, I tried hard, exhausted with fatigue and worn down by sleeplessness, and I [still] am trying, to define the basic characteristics of this identity vaunted by the Arab nationalists, professional pan-Arabists, and the Islamists, [thinking that] perhaps I could find a single reason or convincing explanation as to the uniqueness of this gift of nature that they dote on night and day.

“[I thought that] perhaps I could stumble on just one find by which I could advance a single proof concerning the enigma of the Zionist, colonialist, Burmese, Bengal, and Nepalese conspiracies to make this identity disappear from existence…

“I couldn’t find any convincing reason [to make] people cleave to this identity, apart from a wicked and obscure desire, not free of bad intent, to take revenge on them, deceive them, and keep them in their state of misery, decline, and in their humiliating position.

“This identity has come to mean… oppression, despotism, coercion, repression, prison, mass graves, security chases, exploitation, persecution, the organized plunder of national resources, odious racist discrimination against minorities and women, monopolization of thought, talent, and creativity, and the punishment of the free. It contains many distinguishing characteristics, such as: corruption, fragmentation, wars, tribal conflict, clannishness, blood feuds, and deep-rooted hostilities that never had any basis in the first place.

“[In the Arab world] the ruler is the army boot…, dictatorship, demagoguery…, military coups, and deification of the leaders. Without these unique characteristics, Arab identity loses its… customary and familiar luster and glamour…

“In light of all of these saddening and oppressive facts, if we were to put this identity… up for sale to the bushmen or the cannibals in the jungle, to outcasts or refugees, to gypsies or to vagabonds would any of them agree to buy it?…”(6)

Endnotes: (1) www.aafaq.org, April 23, 2007. (2) www.aafaq.org, April 23, 2007. (3) Paraphrase of Koran 21:33. (4) www.elaph.com, April 22, 2007. (5) www.elaph.com, April 15, 2007. Several weeks after publishing this article, Na’isa himself was invited to appear on “The Opposite Direction” on Al-Jazeera; see MEMRI TV Clip No. 1448, May 8, 2007: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1448. (6) www.elaph.com, April 26, 2007.
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