Mamdouh Bitar, Ruba Mansour:
The Arab countries were an Ottoman colony, and there was acceptance by the fundamentalists of the Ottoman situation, because the Ottoman Caliphate, in their opinion, was not an occupation, but rather an extension of the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates. The Arabs did not dare to openly express their nationalist thought, except after the provocation practiced by the Union and Progress Movement, which practically isolated the Ottoman Caliph and began to Turkify the colonies, which led, especially after the Caliphate was weakened, some, especially those of Lebanese origin, to practice the opposite and opposing thought, such as Najib Azoury and Antoun Saadeh, who considered the Caliphate a continuation and not an occupation. Rather, the Syrian nationalist stressed his rejection and denial of the conquests.
The emergence of Arab nationalist thought was not the result of a conflict with religious thought, as was the case in Europe, but rather the result of the conflict with the Ottomans. In Europe, secular thought triumphed and as a result, secular democratic nationalist authorities were formed. The opposite happened in the East. The authorities that ruled the Arab countries, especially in the Levant, after Sykes-Picot, were nationalist. After 1928, these nationalist authorities were infused with the political Muslim Brotherhood thought. Then it was said that Arabism is Islam and Islam is Arabism, etc. These nationalist-Brotherhood authorities were neither secular nor democratic. In Europe, religion and state were separated, but here religion was merged with the state. Is it strange that dictatorships failed and democracies succeeded? That is why European nationalist thought succeeded and Arab thought failed.
The Arab situation could not have reached the state of misery that we feel and see now, had the Arab nationalist-Brotherhood thought not committed fatal mistakes that European nationalist thought did not commit, which was a revolution of utmost positivity and creativity, especially in the issue of freedom, the freedom of the citizen, the freedom of the homeland, the liberation of religion from superstition, the liberation of women, and the liberation from ignorance. What happened in this region was a kind of reckless, coercive gang. Arab nationalist thought focused all its attention on the issue of overcoming dependence on the West and liberation from Western colonialism, after the West had liberated these peoples from Ottoman colonialism. Here, this thought cannot be blamed for practicing the persistent effort to get rid of foreign colonialism, but in this regard, it remained stagnant for many decades.
Colonialism went immediately after the end of World War II, and the problem ended, but the jihad against colonialism remained as if colonialism was still present. Arab nationalist thought enjoyed stagnation in place, as it was able to employ this stagnation in consecrating its survival, or rather the survival of the militarism that adopted it. The work for liberation from the tyranny of a colonizer that no longer exists was accompanied by the persistent work to consecrate an internal tyrannical colonizer. In other words, the illusory quest to liberate the homeland was accompanied by the creation of dictatorships that enslaved the citizen and robbed him of his freedom…the phenomenon of liberating the homeland and enslaving the citizen!!!
The Arab nationalist-Brotherhood dictatorship did not understand that liberating the homeland can only be achieved through liberating the citizen, and that it is not possible to combine the opposite of liberating the homeland with enslaving the citizen and building more prisons for more citizens. In this way, the homeland was liberated from poverty by impoverishing the citizen, and from ignorance by making the citizen ignorant and destroying educational institutions and establishing memorization schools, developing civil society through the security state that killed civil society, combating fundamentalism by creating the conditions that enable it to grow and expand, which surprised many people after the explosions of the Arab Spring. All the mistakes mentioned, and if space was more, I would mention more of them, did not find practice under the European nationalisms. There was the opposite of what was mentioned, so there was success and here is the opposite of it, which is failure.
European nationalist thought originated in independent countries, while the Arab countries in which Arab nationalist thought originated were not independent, and the external challenges that the Arab countries faced differed radically from the challenges that faced the Western countries that possessed independence and the ability to make decisions. There, the Enlightenment was born and was able to influence the Europeans, who were present in secular, scientific, industrial societies. The Enlightenment transferred from Europe to the East did not have that great influence. The concepts of the Enlightenment did not find sufficient positive interaction in the culturally backward tribal East. In addition to that, the hostility towards the West and the rejection of the West, which still exists and is based on several factors, including the religion of the West and envy, which usually turns into hatred and rejection, then other problems related to the tasks of religion and the relationship of religion to politics, which was absent in the West and became popular in the East, especially after the birth of the Brotherhood in 1928.
There are matters related to women’s rights and human rights that the West has developed forward while the East has developed backward, etc. The reasons for rejection and hostility towards the West a century ago were no different from those in this era, and nothing has changed in this regard.
The success of a concept is not only related to its abstract quality, but also to the form of its applications, and the form of applications is related to the party to which the application is directed. The applications of European nationalist thought were in the hands of peoples more developed than the peoples of the East. In addition to that, European nationalist thought was a popular thought, while in the East it was an elitist thought. In Europe, there was no possibility of confusion by religious concepts, while the confusion in the East was, and is still, at its maximum strength.
In fact, it cannot be said that the death of the Arab nationalist thought was premature, as every thought has a role to play and then another thought comes to replace it. This mechanism is not rooted in the atmosphere of Arab sanctities. Sanctities do not like new situations or even new people. The image that the Arab presidents and leaders presented and are presenting is very expressive of the Arab intellectual and behavioral situation. As long as the leader is still alive, there is no need for a new leader. Even the clinical death of the president does not exempt him from the tasks of serving the beloved homeland, and some leaders continue to carry out their tasks in serving the dear homeland even from their graves.
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