"Identity"

The upshot of all of the Nahda debate is that Arabs were debating and deciding upon their very identity and the various loyalties that they might owe. In discussing nationalism and other debates in the recent posts, I have indicated various potentially conflicting identities and loyalties that had become clear including local, regional, sectarian, tribal, state-based, Pan-Arab and pan-Islamic ones. How they might be reconciled and on what basis was obviously an important question for the Arab world.

The most widely considered conflict among the Arabs was that between the nation-states that had been formed in various circumstances and the ideas of pan-Arabism. A diversity of circumstances was recognised but also a common national feeling, language (at least among educated Arabs), culture and (for the most part) the common religion of Islam as a cultural substructure. Against that, I must consider two strong trends that were evident from at least the 1930s: that of a greater Syrian nationalism and Egyptian nationalism.

Syrian nationalism produced the Parti Populaire Syrien founded by Antun Sa’ada in 1932. Syria (as defined by the party) was viewed as a nation separable from the Arab nation with a long history (some of it pre-dating Islam) and common consciousness of its own. That nation essentially encompassed modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. The unity of these then and currently separate ‘nations’ was thus seen as natural in those circumstances. Independence, secularism and social and economic reforms were all central to the party platform initially. After 1945 the party adopted the view that Syrian political unity should be viewed as a stage on the path to a greater Arab unity. The relevance of this party’s political ideas has since waned significantly.

Egyptian nationalism was perhaps reignited in 1938 by the publication of Taha Hussayn’s The Future of Culture in Egypt. The essence of it appears to be that Egypt retains a separate identity from Arab identity as part of a broader Mediterranean civilisation area, that it has drawn inspiration in particular from Classical Greek civilisation from ancient times, that its religion, geography, Arabic language and history is distinctive and that national feeling is directed to Egypt and is inclusive of both Muslims and Christians. While Islam is the major national religion, subscription to it is nevertheless not viewed as a national imperative and a secular form of state is therefore seen as preferable. Egyptian Arabic was considered important to the soundness of Egyptian national life. It was equally important that Arabic learn to absorb modern European thought as it had begun to do under the influence of Muhammad ‘Ali in the 19th Century to usher in the Nahda.

Lebanese nationalism was a further division off from complete Arab unity. Even within a movement for a Greater Lebanon there was a further division between the smaller sub-region of Mount Lebanon and the rest of the region. As under the Ottoman state, Mount Lebanon had had a degree of autonomy so people such as Butrus Bustani argued in the 19th Century for Mount Lebanese nationalism, too, albeit within a broader Arab nationalism opposed to Ottoman hegemony in the Arab world.

Greater Lebanon as a historical idea that had pre-Islamic origins was pushed by certain nationals such as Bulus Nujaym and the French (such as a M. Duplain) partly in an endeavour to protect what the French especially saw as a vulnerable Christian minority in this part of the Arab world.

A modification of that political ideal was the idea of an autonomous Mount Lebanon under French protection and tutelage within a Greater Syria. The basis of Lebanese unity was said to be a unique common language, geography, culture and common interests. Proponents of this idea included Shukri Ghanim and George Samn.

Post-WWI these competing ideas, Arabism, Greater Syria and Lebanon, greater or otherwise, produced conflicts. France declared its idea of Greater Lebanon realised in 1920. The new state began as a virtual Maronite hegemony in the face of a virtually complete Muslim boycott. While Syrian nationalism distinct from Arabism more generally faded, the Egyptian and Lebanese nationalist debates continued.

On the Lebanese side, for example, Ameen Rihani and Edmond Rabbath discussed the special local form of Arab civilisation in Lebanon. Gibran Khalil Gibran expressed a different Arabist view but with Lebanon as an important feature in his short essay, Your Lebanon and my Lebanon. For Christian Arabs and others such as Michel Chiha and Sa’id ‘Aql, Lebanon is a protectorate for Christians in the midst of a sea of Islam and a Phoenician nation. Pierre Gemayyil and the party of the Phalanges proposed that Lebanon was about an irreducible entity, democratic freedoms and a special role for the Christians. Others such as Fou’ad Afram al-Bustani saw the idea of Lebanon as superior to both political and cultural Arabism (and any other ideology). Kamil Salibi recognised many problems with Lebanese unity but nevertheless regarded Lebanon as the workable basis of a common national identity. Ghassan Tueini presented another perspective. He sees Lebanese nationalism as an element of Arab nationalism that shared one culture and language but several religions and polities. He stressed that to be Arab was not to be a Muslim but it was to seek an ultimate unity (permitting political and religious pluralism) of some political kind. He sees today’s era as a new time of realism concerning what is possible and of seeking what is practical.

In Egypt, a parallel debate was occurring following the earlier themes. Husayn Fawzi, a marine geographer, regarded the Egyptian national spirit as rightly a secular and liberal one with strong links to a broader Arab-Islamic culture and its achievements as well as with its pre-Islamic Egyptian historical depth. Louis Awad, the literary critic, similarly saw the liberal and secular nature of the separate Egyptian nation with a particular emphasis on the contribution its Coptic and Christian heritage element makes to the Arab whole. For him, the continuity of the Coptic personality of Egypt from its earliest times shines through its history illuminating it. He sees the Egyptian Arab language as the unifier of this ongoing national personality which he nevertheless regards as in need of some of the ideas developed in European culture.

The Muslim geographer Jamal Hamdan discusses the unique geography and history that makes the Egyptian personality the unique one it is. Anouar Abdel Malik is a Coptic Christian social scientist and historian who proposes a special progressive and socialist role for Egypt within the Arab world and the Third World. Ghali Shukri was another Coptic Christian who regarded Egypt as a rightful leader of the Arab world but as an Arab leader more than as a Third World leader. This literary critic, prose writer, Arab nationalist and progressive held that this position arose out of the pre-eminent cultural history he saw as evident in view of what he saw as Egypt’s great contribution to Arab civilisation. Tariq al-Bishri, the liberal Islamist historian, viewed Egypt in a wide Arab context but still saw study of what he alleged was Christian and Muslim cooperation and harmony in Egypt as both edifying to Egypt and a worthy model for the remainder of the Arab world.

Finally, Edward Said contributed significantly to debate on Arab identity. He noted what he saw as an extraordinary lack of co-ordination between the Arab countries in a report on this topic and a frustration with a negativity associated with operation of the grouping of Arab countries. He saw what he regarded as disappointingly little evidence of either strategic or economic co-operation among the Arab states. He, further, contrasted this inactivity with the common sympathies for, for example, the plight of the Palestinian people under Jewish domination and Israeli occupation expressed by the multitudes protesting on their behalf on the Arab street in nearby Egypt, Syria and Jordan but also in Morocco and other countries.

He saw this virtual inaction as resulting from factionalism, disunity and the absence of a sense of common Arab purpose among the leadership and resulting in turn in unending violence and destruction with apparent impunity being meted out to the people that Said suggests each government is supposed to serve – the wider Arab nation but, more importantly, ordinary people. He argued that this factionalism was shot right through the Arab polity at every level and that it was most likely mainly the result of a “marked absence of ideals and role models”. He also suggested in making this argument that the loss of the Egyptian role model, Nasser, for all his policy faults, was a profoundly sad one as Nasser has not been able to be replaced in the Arab imagination by any potential Arab leader of a liberation movement for ordinary Arab people.