Rouba Mansour, Mira Al-Bitar
Since the Arab-Islamic world lives in a miserable reality, it is logical to accuse the political and social means that control the management of the groups in this region and the path to their development of negligence or even failure, It is logical then to say that there is a shallowness of Arab-Islamic political thought and a socio-political cultural misery that has manifested itself in many shortcomings, including the accumulation of prohibitions and taboos and the restriction of human freedom, which is no different in origin from the human being of societies that have progressed and developed and have had bread, freedom, security, guarantees, real self-confidence and respect, It is clear that this management is linked to an Arab-Islamic political policy, in which the proportions of Arabism and political sectarianism vary, There is what is mostly Arab and there is what is mostly political sectarian, i.e., Brotherhood, but the background represented by absoluteness, dogmatism, monotheism, heritage and past is the same in almost all cases.
He asks in the negative if there is an alternative to religious Arabism, then he asks if abolishing political sectarianism, i.e. the Brotherhood and Arabism, is a necessity for moving forward in terms of progress and civilization,That is, according to the first position, there is no alternative to Arabism and political Islam, and the second position tends towards arbitrary abolitionist solutions, as if the mind cannot accommodate anything other than Arabism and political Islam. Thus, the experiences of most of the peoples of this planet, who progressed without Arab nationalist thought and without religious political references and guidance, are ignored.
The assertion that there is no alternative to Arabism and political Islam suggests a degree of belittling of the issues of these peoples, since there is nothing in this life that has no alternative, There are dozens of parallel alternatives capable of reaching the goal, and there are many alternative methodologies, The alternative cannot be limited to one direction, one party, one set of concepts, or one nationalism!
Secularism, which solved European problems, was not a party, a religious doctrine, a nationalism, a rigid or sacred idea. Rather, it was a methodology dedicated to development and realism within a rational and scientific framework, a methodology for the people to be governed by the people with transparency that evolves according to circumstances and data. Secularism even has different forms, and each form may evolve into another, Rigidity and monolithicity that negate human nature and the inability or will to discover alternatives were the greatest obstacles to progress and development, Some people lack the will and ability to question the validity of what exists, because what exists is either sacred or similar to sacred, and it is not permissible to dismiss the sacred or criticize it, even if it fails or commits a crime, Another obstacle was the confusion between the master and the servant, Every methodology, political or social orientation, or practice should serve humanity, A person who practices serving a methodology, behavior, or belief that is harmful to him is a person of voluntary suicide and extinction.
The intractable problems began with the transformation of Arabism into a religion and the transformation of religion into politics, The Arabism-religion slumber assassinated critical thinking and imprisoned thought and development in the prison of constants and sanctities, That is, politicized Arabism was in its structure religious, like the backward, reactionary Brotherhood, which lost the progressive sense and scientific thinking based on criticism, Beware of attacking Arabism! And beware of attacking religion. Here you are a traitor and there you are an infidel, Arabism, as a political system, has closed in on the military, just as political Islam has closed in on the shell of religious fanaticism and racism in the form of the best nation.
The future, under the current climate of decadence in the Arab world, portends calamities rooted in fanaticism and rigidity, There is no salvation except through liberating the mind and confronting all forms of monolithic thought, concepts, and perspectives, as well as the blind imitation that has stifled reason, Human freedom and rights must be defended to build a developed civil society governed by reason and enlightenment, It is time to stop the charade under the guise of defending religion, We need to defend life first and foremost, There is no solution without secularism as an alternative to any other system at the state and national levels. The people have had enough of failure in the dark caves of closed and monopolistic political Islam, controlled by a group that trades in religion, The people have had enough of the failure and humiliation of a castrated Arab nationalist ideology devoid of intellectual depth, a racist and exclusionary nationalist ideology that died in infancy and was crippled and ineffective, lacking any validity.
If we search for the position of Arabism and its intellectual contents in the Arab intellectual spectrum, which was characterized by a contemporary enlightenment aspect such as Muhammad Abdul-Jabiri, Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, Tayeb Tizini, Adonis, Fouad Zakaria, Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, Sayed Qemni, Hassan Hanafi, Hussein Mroueh, Mahdi Amel, etc., we will not find it, We find it in the Islamized form with Zaki al-Arsuzi and Aflaq. We do not find it in the positivist liberation thought with Najib Mahmoud, Taha Hussein, and Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad. We do not find a non-racist nationalist thought in the religious fundamentalism of the Muslim Brotherhood and other political Islam groups. Despite the lack of Arab intellectual depth even among the internationalist Muhammadans, we saw the ability of the Arab nationalist current to control many Arab countries at the hands of the military coups such as Nasser and the Baath,Cons e quently, the share of destruction suffered by these countries ruled by the military and disguised by the veil of Arab nationalism was greater than what befell the countries that distanced themselves relatively from the Arab nationalist line.
How can the affliction of Iraq and Syria with those disasters be explained without addressing the Arab nationalist incubator, which has transformed from being a culture into a politics and religion, under whose shadow ISIS, Al-Nusra and other fundamentalists flourished? The fundamentalist revival was an indication of the failure of groups that considered themselves enlightened nationalists such as Baath and Nasserism, If there had been a true national enlightenment, that fundamentalism that destroys everything that is right, beautiful and moral would not have flourished. The European medieval fundamentalism did not flourish under European nationalist thought.
The future, in light of the decadent climate in which the Arab world lives, with its fanaticism and rigidity, portends calamities, There is no salvation or rescue except by liberating the mind and confronting all forms of monolithic thought, concepts, and singular perspectives, as well as the blind imitation that has stifled reason. Human freedom and the right to establish a secular, progressive, and civil society, guided by rationality and enlightenment, must be defended, It is time to stop the farce that has accompanied the people under the pretext of defending religion, The people need to defend life, and religion does not need the people to defend it, There is a Creator who is capable of everything, especially defending religion in the houses of God. There is no alternative to secularism outside the houses of God at the level of the state and the nation, The people have had enough of failure in the darkness and injustice of closed and monopolized political Islam by groups that trade in religion, The people have had enough of the failure of a castrated Arab nationalist nonsense without intellectual depth, born castrated and crippled without validity or effectiveness, and died in infancy.