Mamdouh Bitar, Ruba Mansour
Bedouinism is a human condition, one of its most important characteristics being stagnation and a lack of development. Like the desert, human development is not always primarily linked to human will, but rather to the living conditions dictated by the environment and nature of the peoples exposed to it. The Bedouin finds himself in the desert by chance, not by choice or will. The balance of power in his interaction with the desert logically favors the desert. Here, he has no choice but to change himself, adapting to the environmental conditions he cannot alter.
Therefore, some of the Bedouin’s qualities, such as protecting those who seek refuge with him and other good qualities, are intertwined with vices such as rudeness, brutality, and religious extremism, followed by reliance on raiding and plunder. The desert does not provide the means to practice agriculture, which hones the mind and brawn with the characteristics of production and living off the product. Boasting one’s lineage and ancestry has its environmental causes, as does the inferior view of women, who are unable to engage in theft and plunder of trade caravans like men. Revenge was a primitive, deterrent alternative to punishment and justice. A just judiciary requires compliance with this just judiciary, which is incompatible with the presence of a tribal leader who acts as a judge who is completely biased toward his tribe. Due to the lack of a source of livelihood, such as agriculture, theft and plunder became the sole source of livelihood. Theft required strong men to wage war. War meant constant fighting because economic necessity persisted. The Bedouin’s profession was to wage wars for plunder, and thus automatically led to killing. When the Bedouin found no external enemy, he fought internally, fighting himself due to his addiction to warfare. The passion for fighting was and remains one of the most prominent traits of the Arab personality. It was uncommon in Islam and before Islam, more than the practice of warfare. Bedouinism does not require wearing a galabiya; many Bedouin mentalities are found among those who wear formal suits. It is a matter of mentality, not outerwear. Wearing a suit is possible in the city, and maintaining a Bedouin mentality is possible and comfortable in the city because it does not require effort to develop, and development is difficult without interaction and communication with others. How can verbal culture ensure this communication? Don’t we all notice the Arab aversion to learning new things through reading? Reading, if it exists, is the Quran. Here, it’s worth noting the small number of pages read by Arabs compared to Israelis, as well as the comparison of the number of books published in the Arab-Islamic world to the number published in Israel! Also noteworthy is the powerful influence of sheikhs’ sermons, as well as the passion for television and satellite channels. All of this is evidence of the dominance of Bedouin verbal culture over people’s minds and consciousness. Bedouin verbal culture is closely related to the mind’s ability to perform its functions and tasks. The mind’s reliance on verbal culture transforms it into a mind with great capacity, capable of enduring Bedouin surrender in a distinctive and astonishing way. This is because the surrendered mind is incapable of understanding barbarism, especially its treatment, of understanding chaos and the ability to eliminate it, and of finding new horizons that transform individuals into a community, not a herd of individuals. The concept of individuals within a community is very different from the concept of a group of individuals. There were no “communities” in the Arabian Peninsula. The culture of relying on the individual is the culture of the “hero of the nation,” which we know well from our experience of the hero and individual heroism. Concern for the individual’s interests was a primary reason for encouraging the leaders of the Muhammadan armies to wage war, as each of them had a city to rule. Sharkhabil, the great warlord, had his own city, and each leader, Amakhir, had his own city. Concern for the interests of the individual fighter was the primary reason for encouraging the Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula to devote themselves to war. They shared the spoils of war with the Caliphate and Ibn Abdullah at attractive rates for the fighters: four-fifths for the fighters, compared to one-fifth for the Caliphate or Ibn Abdullah. Who turned a fifth into a great fortune. Anyone who reads the book “The Management of Savagery” by Abu Bakr Naji will find a lengthy chapter on ISIS’s understanding of fighters, their salaries, and their share of prisoners and spoils. ISIS initially focused on controlling sources of livelihood and money (oil), so that it could grant each fighter a monthly salary said to have reached $1,000, in addition to housing for his family and women. History repeated itself with ISIS for a not-so-short period, and Arabs remained individuals or groups living side by side, not together. This was one of the most important reasons for the Arabs’ failure, and for ISIS as well.
The failure of Arabs in general is a reflection of the failure of Bedouinism. In this green homeland, we are Bedouins without a desert! This is the deadly paradox