By Masri Feki © Al-Seyassah (Kuwait)*
August 4, 2007

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For a long period of time those called Arabs were the tribes living in the Arabian Peninsula… After the Islamic conquests, the number of Arabic-speakers began to rise. These new Arabic-speakers could not claim descent from the Arabs, and for many centuries they were not viewed as Arabs, nor did they consider themselves to be such.

Why then are all Arabic-speakers considered to be Arabs? While the pan-Arab current believes that nationhood is founded on the basis of language – precisely as the Islamists believe that nationhood is founded on the basis of religion – this does not mean that all Arabic-speakers embrace this concept – precisely as not all Muslims believe in political Islam and the idea of one Islamic nation.

I do not deny that a common language is one of the factors capable of forging disparate elements into a single nation. Nonetheless, language in and of itself is not a sufficient objective benchmark for the forming of a nation, precisely as religion has no exclusive rights over any given race or tribe. Numerous peoples around the world share a language without their being a single nation.

In truth, the Egyptians are no more Arab then the Mexicans and Cubans are Spanish. They are no more Arab than the Americans and Australians are English. And they are no more Arab than some African peoples are French.

The factors that make up a given nation are: belonging to a geographical entity, shared values and traditions, mutual desires, ideas, and interests, and memories and dreams held in common.

In contrast with all other national experiences in the world, which came to concretize objective national realities, Arab nationalism is the creator of the Arab nation more than it is a consequence of it.

Pan-Arab nationalists view the countries with an Arab-speaking majority as part of a united Arab expanse and think that every Arabic-speaker should proclaim himself an Arab, unambiguously and without reservation, whatever his cultural and historical frame of reference.

This arbitrary conception of nationhood, which proclaims someone an Arab against his will and on the sole basis of his speaking Arabic, stands in contradiction to important historical developments and the legitimate national demands of millions of individuals among the marginalized minorities living in our region.

It is worth mentioning here that at the end of the 19th century, when an organized Arab nationalist movement first appeared, it comprised the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent, but did not take Egypt and Sudan into consideration. Then the views of the self-proclaimed 'Free Officers' revolt were imposed on us and Nasser proclaimed the gospel of Pan-Arabism. The Egyptian army became implicated in wars that had nothing to do with us.

Today we find the various countries of North Africa in the Arab League – countries where the Amazigh (i.e. Berbers) suffer great oppression. Also included in the Arab League are African countries that are not Arabic-speaking, such as Somalia, Djibouti, and the Comoros...

This expansive conception [of Arab nationalism], which is detrimental to the Arab people and their identity, is in total contradiction with the original morals of the Arabs, and likewise contradicts the pluralistic nature that characterized the Middle East throughout the centuries up to the early 20th century – at which point our cultural elites, who were striving for liberation from the grasp of the Ottoman Empire… together with the Mandatory powers, France and Britain, whose interests at the time intersected with those of the Pan-Arabists, found in Pan-Arabism a simple and practical exposition of the cause of liberation in the region.

The problem is that this totalizing theory did not present realistic and just solutions to the various conflicts that tear apart our region to this day. The policies of forced Arabization; the mistreatment of the Kurdish minority in Iraq, the oppression of the Kurds in Syria, the harassment of the Coptic minority in Egypt and the Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq; the provocations against what is left of the Jewish diaspora in a few countries like Yemen, Syria, and Iraq; and the intimidation and cultural negation of any minority that refuses to submit to what the peddlers of Pan-Arabism try to impose on them – all of this does nothing but generate more violence and tragedy.

This should not be interpreted as a criticism of the [original] august Arab identity. Arabism is not illegitimate in and of itself. But in its expanded definition as Pan-Arabism, and as promoted by a group of Pan-Arabists with a restrictive approach to culture, it conflicts with the identities of non-Arab peoples who have adopted Arabic as a national language, and even with those who have not – especially in the Horn of Africa.

If the military intervention in Iraq and the deposing of the Pan-Arabist Saddam Hussein regime has had one positive result, aside from the timid beginnings of a democratic political process, it is without doubt the fact that light has been shed on the great sectarian, linguistic, and cultural diversity with which the Middle East is blessed. The question of accepting the other's difference and identity remains the greatest challenge for the Arab nationalists.