Serbest Nabi
Will the Arabism preached by Zaki al-Arsuzi, Sati’ al-Husri, Michel Aflaq, Muhammad Izzat Darwaza, and others, withstand the political and social challenges that have been plaguing the Arab world for a decade?
Since its emergence in the late 19th century, Arabism, as a totalitarian ideology, is facing its third biggest historical challenge, which might be the last challenge that heralds its demise from history, without implying that the Arab national project will necessarily disappear in turn.
Like Turanism, Arabism was based on the preludes of the exclusion and negation of the historical cultures, and it was largely romantic and steeped in non-historicism. Additionally, it deliberately intended to patch itself with religious values, political elements, and myths that do not fully correspond to a modernist awareness of affiliation, as it was based on ethnic affiliation, and religious and sectarian loyalty, where its main weakness lies.
While the Turanism in its Ataturk formula, deliberately settled its choice by its bias towards a radical secularism that did not take much care of the religious history and the spiritual inheritance of the Turkish peoples and their myths. It created a new concept for the awareness of affiliation, which is the Turkish citizenship, which in turn, was a pure ethnic concept devoid of any cultural pluralism. This gave it a historical momentum for a century where the Turkish state continued and is still continuing, despite the societal and cultural divisions it is now facing, which is rooted in the emergence of the state itself, such as the Kurdish and Armenian issues… etc.
The Palestine War in the middle of the 20th century, represented the first historical challenge to the awareness of the Arab affiliation. Arabism has failed to find unity in the political position on both the official and popular levels. Arabism was the most prominent witness to the defeat of the Arabs in front of an emerging and modern society.
The second challenge that Arabism faced, was in the last decade of the 20th century, which began with the occupation of Kuwait and continued until the fall of Baghdad in 2003. During this period, Arabism proved its complete inability to be a common and unifying identity for the Arab regime.
To this historical moment, Arabism has not served as a comprehensive basis for modern Arab citizenship, in addition to its failure to be a framework for a modernist democratic regime. Otherwise, it has always been a ride for tyrannical regimes, and a cover for new adventurers and revolutionaries who usurped power and the will of the people in their name, as it happened in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Not to mention that it has always been a ferment for deep political divisions within the Arab societies. This has been proven by the recent historical facts of the Arab world peoples’ uprisings.
The uprisings of the so-called Arab Spring constituted the third historical challenge to Arabism. Instead of the uprisings becoming a common enlightening awareness of the protestors, and a political and ideological scope to unify their demands, they disintegrated into their primary elements to nourish extremist forms of the consciousness of the affiliation, and proved their fragility among the Arab citizens. Here, the deep political and ideological dilemma of these uprisings in Syria, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen lies.
The two Arab regimes in Syria and Iraq summarized the national identity to one affiliation, paved the way for sectarian and ethnic fanaticism, formed political and religious tyranny, worked to exclude the different other, and denied its humanity, merit and worthiness. These two regimes prevented the creation of a common awareness of affiliation among all Syrians or Iraqis, which pushed the situation to a horrific, protracted internal conflict in the two countries that could be described as self-destruction.
It is certain that violence grows among individuals and exacerbates when a unique sense of religious, sectarian or ethnic identity is entrenched in them that reinforces its differentiation and superiority. The rejection of the other resulting from this feeling or conviction is, in most cases, one of the main drivers of civil conflicts and sectarian confrontations. When we meditate the conflicts going on around us, it becomes clear to us that one of the most important sources that feed these conflicts is; the claim that people can be classified on the basis of religion, sect, or race. The Syrians’ bitter experience of killing, destruction and displacement in recent years cannot be classified except in the category of the results of this racist and sectarian mentality.
The domination of the Arab regime in Syria has perpetuated the process of division and mutual mistrust among the original communities for more than half a century. From this point, this regime started manipulating the sectarian and ethnic whims and moods that dwell in its consciousness, to show itself as the only source of national cohesion.
In an even more extreme and malicious way, the ruling Syrian Baath Party nourished suspicion and mutual caution between the Arab and Kurdish identities, and enshrined this among the prevailing Arab majority by presenting a distorted image of the Kurds and their political goals, as a suspicious and defected element in the body of Arabism that must be disposed of by various means. This image is inherited by the Muslim Brotherhood and opposition Coalition, and remained loyal in sticking to it and justifying its abhorrent hatred to the Kurds and other Syrian communities more than the regime.
The regime has been drawing a dividing line between the two identities as two parallel systems that do not meet, and one of them should prevail at the expense of the other. It established a central set of political traditions that were oppressive, shielding and isolating for the Kurds. It made the Arab identity a subjugating, domineering and pressuring one, while it made the Kurdish identity subdued and defeated under the rule of the intelligence and military.
Arabism, as we have been accustomed to, in its ideological formulas, will be the biggest loser on the Syrian territory, just as it was in Iraq, whether we like it or not. The Arab ideology, theory and practice, as a narrative system, will be displaced before the emergence of another ideological system – globalized Islam – which will replace it for a while, and social affiliations and political loyalties based on pre-modernist local ideologies will emerge.
In any case, Syria, as a state, will need to be restructured on the basis of recognizing this new reality and getting its existence justification from it. What seems urgent from the historical point of view is the establishment within a democratic, pluralistic and secular horizon. Otherwise, partition will be the inevitable fate of the country, without arrogance or empty ideological hostility. Let us start from here.