Reimagining Arab Political Identity

Justice, Women's Rights and the Arab State

Salam Hawa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429755552
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book discusses the idea that Arab cultural and political identity has been suppressed by centuries of dominance by imperial outsiders and by religious and nationalist ideologies with the result that present day Arab societies are characterised by a crisis of identity where fundamentalism or chaos seem to be the only available choices. Tracing developments from pre-Islamic times through to the present, the book analyses the evolution of Arab political identity through a multi-layered lens, including memory and forgetting, social and cultural norms, local laws, poetry, dance, attitudes to women, foreigners and animals, ancient historical narratives and more. It argues that Arab societies have much to gain by recovering the "happy memory" of Arab culture as it was before being distorted.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780429424625-1

With the exception of few specialised historians, Arab intellectuals exhibit profound lack of interest in the study of pre-Islamic Arabia. The mere suggestion of a discussion on the subject tends to elicit some irritation, and one is given the impression that it may be considered a waste of time. Indeed, it is not at all obvious to the concerned Arab intellectual how a review of Arab history could lead to any solution concerning the events taking place today. They would argue Arabs are quite aware of their deep and ancient history – the Golden Age of the Caliphate – and are more concerned with finding answers to questions regarding their current failed effort to establish economically and socially viable independent Arab states.¹ And yet, one could argue, as I wish to do here, that there are multiple reasons why the Arabs need to revisit the well-worn narratives of their past, and that it is precisely because the entire region is experiencing a general crisis that such a review is not only desirable, but most fundamentally necessary.

I understand Arab intellectuals’ intolerance to revisit ancient Arab history, which may appear irrelevant as they contend with events that are pulverising Arab society and culture. One can only imagine that for the majority living in the region it may seem that they are standing at a precipice, watching helplessly as their world is torn asunder. However, given the level of destruction of local infrastructure and cultural heritage, Arab and international intellectuals are already debating² how to safeguard future generations’ ability to learn about, understand, and transmit a coherent narrative of Arab history, culture, and language. With many having been killed, traded as slaves, made homeless in their country, or having become refugees abroad, there is a sense that the bearers of this long and rich civilisation are denied the right to live in their homeland on their own terms, practising thousands-year-old culture.

As history has shown, war alters lives, and sometimes alters them irrevocably. Once civil war has played itself out, the harder part for those who remain or return will be the rebuilding of their society. The problems they are likely to face will involve more than bricks and mortar, as individuals reconnect with their fellow citizens to come to terms with realities that made war inevitable. For war against acknowledged foreign invaders has the general merit of uniting a population in defence of their territory and culture. However, as the terrorists (foreign and local) associated their ideology with Islam, they sought to turn everything the Arabs held as sacred into tools of oppression, dispossession, cruelty, torture, and murder. This masterful subversion allowed them to dissimulate a military coup d’état with civil war. They have used the holy scripture of the Qur’an to justify their wanton attacks on peaceful communities, sowing divisions based on religious belief, and laying the foundation for continued internal strife. In appropriating the religion, they sought to distort Arab history, cultural practices, and most of all, their actions meant to put the social and political identity of the population in a state of complete upheaval. It is unsurprising that scholars in these countries desperately seek methods to counteract divisions created by war and violence, and encourage reconciliation and cultural reunification.³

Today’s Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen can learn from the challenges Lebanon faced when the country emerged from its civil war (1975–1990). To stop the bloodshed, Lebanese decision makers signed the Ta’if Accord (1989)⁴ in which they agreed to follow the formula No victor / No vanquished. This meant that all parties to the civil war can re-enter political life in the post-war state without fear of prosecution. Armed militias, with the exception of Hizbullah,⁵ agreed to turn in their weapons in exchange for amnesty. Most significantly, the political elite proposed a constitutional amendment to redistribute parliamentary seats 50/50 between Christians and Muslims – raising the proportion of Muslim representation from the previous six Christian to five Muslim representatives. Although a worthwhile concession, it falls short of solving one of the main issues behind the civil war, and which continues to rankle since the Christian-controlled political establishment refuses to allow a census (the last was in 1932) that is certain to show the Christians to be grossly over-represented.

Notwithstanding the level of representation, the main challenge to Lebanon’s reconciliation efforts was characterised by Sune Haugbølle as “state-sponsored ‘amnesia’” (Picard and Ramsbotham, 2012: 15). In an international review of the country’s peace and reconciliation efforts, Haugbølle intimated that Lebanon’s political elites, fearful of reprisals for their active participation in the civil war, have consistently refused to acknowledge the need for state memorialisation of the events that had torn the country apart. The author observed that this refusal appears to have led to a rise in “widely differing and strongly politicised narratives of the war.” While a certain level of forgetting is necessary, experts agree the challenge would be to “find a way to accommodate existing peace, reconciliation and memory initiatives … with the political and social powerbrokers in the country” (Picard and Ramsbotham, 2012: 15). As it stands, it is believed the state’s failure to acknowledge this traumatic part of its recent history has left a void that was quickly filled by sectarian groups. The latter’s effort to commemorate the dead and missing has given rise to a number of individual memorialisations, which when taken together precludes collective healing and national reconciliation.⁶

Haugbølle’s suggestion that the state is solely to blame for the “amnesia” is problematic, since sectarian group leaders are also elected members of parliament, and therefore constitute the state. Part of the problem in this argument is the unexpressed view the state is somehow imposed on the population, and as such remains an alien instrument blocking, manipulating, and controlling memory. In viewing the state as an external actor, Haugbølle is likely echoing Lebanese citizens’ perception of the divide between their wish to memorialise the events that altered their lives, and the state’s goal to maintain peace by restoring normalcy, which requires political groups overlook past and existing divisions. Haugbølle’s argument points to Lebanon’s struggle to reconcile and unite its previously warring political groups, on the one hand, and help its citizens mourn and commemorate their dead without the acrimony that led the entire country to tear itself apart, on the other. The Lebanese state is therefore facing an either/or situation: it can either remain united by acting as if no war had taken place, or it can respond to its citizens’ need for closure by attempting to come up with forms of memorialisation, which, given the recent violent history among these groups, would be unlikely to satisfy all, or any, of the parties. At the heart of this dilemma is the question of belonging, of what it means to be Lebanese, and to what extent is the existing – albeit slightly modified – social contract between state and society capable of uniting the heavily polarised population. The last issue may prove destabilising, since it puts in question the viability of the state’s constitution and increases the pressure to review its founding principles.

A quick review of twentieth century history of the region shows that Lebanon had been created by France to be ruled by its allies in the region, the Christian Maronites. Lebanon’s territory was established in 1920 through the League of Nations, which added to the Ottoman district of the Lebanon Mountain the fertile lands of the Beqaa‘ valley in the east and ‘akkar in the north, both of which belonged historically and culturally to the Ottoman province of Syria. The addition of these lands radically altered the religious balance of the population, proportionally lowering the number of Christians to Muslims and Druze by a large margin. The result was a country officially led by minority Christian Maronites over majority Muslim and Druze, and lacking any sense of common identity.

According to Lebanese author and historian Kamal Salibi, prior to the making of the country through colonial edict, the population that formed the Republic of Lebanon never shared a common political identity. Indeed, in the last two centuries, the region experienced several bloody encounters between opposing factions: Maronites and Druze (1843, 1860) and Christians and Muslims (1958, 1975). Salibi noted that they did not hold a common identity in 1920 when the territory was established, or in 1943 when the country became independent, or in 1958 when the two groups (Muslims and Christians) fought over whether Lebanon should join a pan-Arab nation or remain neutral. However, writing in 1988, a year prior to the signing of the Ta’if Accord, Salibi observed that in spite of the severely weakened Lebanese state “there has never been a time when the Muslims and Christians of Lebanon have exhibited, on the whole, a keener consciousness of common identity, albeit with somewhat different nuances.” These nuances centred primarily on “the fundamental disagreement over the historicity of their country: the Christians by and large affirming it, and the Muslims denying it” (Salibi, 1988: 2, 3). While the Christians, following French colonial narrative of the history of the region, “identified themselves in terms of Lebanese particularism,” the Muslims insisted “whatever history Lebanon can claim for itself is in reality part of a broader Arab history” (Salibi, 1988: 3).

Lebanon’s struggle with national identity is not unique, and is replicated, albeit with differing political, ethnic, or religious groups, across the Arab world. As with Lebanon, these disagreements appeared following the arbitrary division of the previous Ottoman Arab provinces into countries, the borders of which were determined according to competing British, French, and US colonial interests. Arab countries’ political elites consisted of religious minorities who came to power, intentionally or accidentally, as a result of colonial intervention. For example: Lebanon, majority Muslim, is ruled by Christian Maronites; Syria, majority Sunni, is ruled by ‘alawites; Iraq, majority Shi’a, was ruled, until the US invasion in 2003, by minority Sunni. Salibi’s analysis points to the need for these minority groups not only to provide the people with a reason for their right to rule, but also to produce a historical narrative to justify the very existence, i.e. the raison d’être, of the state. Their failure to do so has weakened the social fabric of their societies, leaving them prey to extremist ideologies and foreign interference.

For Syria, Yemen, and Iraq to re-establish peace through reconciliation, they too will find it necessary to review their history. Such an undertaking will require the political establishment and leading intellectuals to examine the competing historical narratives of their country, and that of the region. Courage is required – for at the core of these multiple narratives there exists “the notion” that “what constitutes Arab history remains confused by the fundamental association between Arabism and Islam” (Salibi, 1988: 3). This conflation occurs precisely because since the establishing of the Umayyad Empire, Arab imperial rulers made a point of centring Arab history on the revelation of the Qur’an. However, with groups of Islamist terrorists seeking to destroy all vestiges of Arab antiquity and ancient history, there is an urgent need to do more than simply acknowledge this highly problematic conflation. With their cultural identity and heritage in the balance, they need to make an exceptional effort to trace their history and learn how their culture had evolved. For even a cursory look at what we have recently learned of Arab civilisation indicates that pre-Islamic Arabs, whether nomad, semi-nomad, or sedentary, were attached to two fundamental political principles that set them apart from the structure and ethos of empire: an unremitting attachment to freedom and independence, and a deep belief in jural equality, such that no one may enslave or rule another.⁷

The attachment to freedom and jural equality extended to pre-Islamic women. Evidence of pre-Islamic Arabs practising gender equality has been confirmed thanks to recent archaeological discoveries in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Yemen. A well-known example of such discoveries relates to 35 legal documents from the Nabataean kingdom (312 bce–106 ce), the capital of which was Petra, located in modern-day Jordan. They belonged to a young Jewish widow named Babatha who lived in the kingdom shortly after it was occupied by Rome in 106 ce. In addition to ancient Greek historian Strabo’s description of the Nabataeans’ aversion to owning slaves, and demonstrable political equality between king and citizenry (Taylor, 2002: 65), the documents show Nabataean women were educated, had the right to buy and sell property, run their own business, and gain custody of their children in case of divorce or widowhood. Socially, they were highly regarded, exemplified by the fact the profile of the queen appeared on the coins together with that of the king, and a quick glance at the list of Nabataean kings shows the name of their queen next to theirs (Taylor, 2002: 175). Archaeologists also found that following the Roman occupation of the kingdom, many local laws remained in place, save for the rights and privileges of widows regarding child custody and inheritance. Babatha’s documents show that after the death of her husband she had to fight vigorously to gain custody of her child and access his inheritance. While this would have been legal under Nabataean law, Roman law prohibited her from doing so. Although allowed custody, she was obliged to assign two guardians to disburse the child’s inheritance – one Jewish and the other Nabataean.

Such examples illustrate the tremendous dissonance between Arab history as it is commonly taught today and the expanse of pre-Islamic Arabian history that is not acknowledged either by the governments of Arab states, or by specialists in the subject. This disconnect is astounding in its breadth, and becomes even more disquieting as the world witnesses the wilful destruction by religious fundamentalists of ancient cities, monuments, and artefacts which tell of a deeply neglected history that predates Islam. It is difficult not to suspect that behind this destruction lies the perverse wish to reduce Arab history to the misshapen understanding of a faith. Given their barbaric acts, fundamentalist terrorists have led – inadvertently or intentionally – the Arab population to question its identity, its sense of being and belonging, not only to a nation state, but also to a history, a culture, a faith. Surprisingly, answers to these questions of identity tend to call upon long-held memories of ancient Arab culture and tradition; even religious Arabs believe deeply, when they respond to Western accusation of belonging to a regressive culture, that theirs is democratic, that Arab women have extensive rights and are highly respected in Arab society, and that freedom is the bulwark of their faith. However, no one who visits Arab lands today could believe these assertions, and while some⁸ may claim the Arabs are deluded, I would counter that the belief is authentic, and a closer look at Arab cultural practices and traditions will show they continue to cling, with varying degrees, to the two original principles of freedom and equality, despite centuries of corrupt political leaders and foreign occupation.

While they may be authentic, however, these cultural beliefs need to be grounded in reality, and it is the duty of this Arab generation to delve deeply into its cultural history and recover a sense of cultural and political identity based on this common heritage. More to the point, religious fundamentalists’ violence raises questions regarding the truth behind the claim that Islamism is identical to Arabism. Although the majority in the Arab world would agree that the actions of fundamentalists are inconsistent with the principles of the religion of peace, many have come, nevertheless,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 History, language, identity of pre-Islamic Arabia
• 3 Founding of Arab collective memory
• 4 Archiving Arab collective memory
• 5 Arab identity in transition
• 6 Islamic identity as obligated memory
• 7 Renegotiating the social contract
• Index