In the days of Gamal Abdul Nasser the system of beliefs known as Arab nationalism played a vitally important social role. It promoted a sense of unity between the westernized elite and the traditional masses, and it provided a coherent way for the elite to relate to the west under difficult circumstances fighting the west politically, while pressing for the spread of western culture within the Arab world.

The performance of this role was a great achievement for the Arab nationalist movement, and yet today the ideological formulas it advocated have lost their force. Arab society has become increasingly polarized in recent years. On the one hand, we see a strong popular reaction, in the form of religious revivalism, against a process of westernization that is believed to have gone out of control. On the other hand, at the elite level there has been a certain process of depoliticization, prompted both by the growth of technocracy in the state and industrial apparatus and by the commercial explosion accompanying the oil boom. And given the depth of the currents of events that led to this polarization, there is no ready solution in sight.

Arab nationalism promoted social unity because its message reinforced the religious and cultural values of the common people, assuring them of the worth of their heritage, their brotherhood, and their destiny as a community in the face of foreign domination. It assured them that the process of modernization taking place in their society did not constitute a threat to the things that they cherished: on the contrary, it supported them, and it depended on the masses for their support.

At the same time Arab nationalism offered an equally important message to the privileged classes, with their western education, their contacts with westerners, and their taste for western living, Arab nationalism asserted that westernization did not need to conflict with their fundamental identity as Arabs, provided they kept in close touch with their own society and sought to bring progress to all its members. More than this, it taught them that the political conflict with the west which it was their duty to lead was quite compatible with the acquisition of western culture, for the Arabs' struggle was with western governments, not with western peoples or ways of life.

In these respects we may consider the Arab nationalist movement as a direct successor to the Islamic Salafiya movement that preceded it. The simple difference is that the nationalists have proceded from a secular starting point to reach out to traditional society, whereas the Salafiya proceded in an opposite direction; but both sought to bridge the gap. Preaching that the best things offered by the west, such as modern science, constitutional politics, and liberal culture, are rooted in the

Arab society has become increasingly polarized in recent years. On the one hand, we see a strong popular reaction, in the form of religious revivalism, against a process of westernization that is believed to have gone out of control. On the other hand, at the elite level there has been a certain process of depoliticization, prompted both by the growth of technocracy in the state and industrial apparatus and by the commercial explosion accompanying the oil boom. Original principles of Islam, the Salafiya sought a symbiosis of organic integration of the secular and spiritual, of the elite and the mass culture, much as the Arab nationalists, have done.

All of this message was strengthened by a certain political belief, shared between Arab nationalists and western liberals, that the political conflicts-over Palestine, imperialism, revolution, and the rest were merely manifestations of a temporary and unnecessary historical phase resulting from the shortsightedness or arrogance of certain western statesmen, not from a clash of real interests. In due time it would be reasonable to hope that western governments would come to see the validity of Arab aspirations, and would adjust to them. This meant that in the meanwhile it was all the more important for the Arab elites to keep in touch with their western counterparts, both politicians and intellectuals, in order to persuade them of the need for a change in policy. For the Arab elites were overwhelmingly interested in politics and in carrying on a political dialog in the west. And if the effort at political persuasion should fail, there remained the consideration that cultural (and commercial) contact with the west should continue by itself, even without a supportive political atmosphere.

It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of this last idea. Several generations of Arab intellectuals have been raised on it. They maintained close contact with Europe and the United States throughout a long era of intense political frustration, from the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 to the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Tens of thousands of Arab students attended universities in the west; institutions within the Arab world, such as the American University of Beirut, St. Joseph University, and the state universities of Cairo and Alexandria were built upon a belief in American or European curricula and teaching methods, plus an instructional content combining western and Arab or Islamic history, literature, and civilization. The universal harmony of culture was the implicit belief shared by Arab nationalists and western liberals. It was thanks to the Arab nationalist movement that something of this belief was absorbed also at the mass level, so that the masses, who themselves shared very little of the experience of the educated classes, generally accepted the evolution of those classes and their secular life-styles quite smoothly.(*)

In recent years the social and ideological atmosphere in the Arab world has undergone a palpable shift. The masses with their traditional attitudes, and the elites with their secular education and careers, have each moved away from their common meeting ground. The symbiosis favored by the liberal reformers, the faith in the essential oneness of human cultural values, no longer commands broad support. Instead there appears to be a growing assumption that the Islamic and secular ways of life are not really compatible.

This assumption takes several alternative forms. In its mildest version, a primordial attachment to religion is said to be the only meaningful basis of social identity available to the masses, while the upper classes with their secular education tend to have more in common with foreigners than they do with their own fellow citizens. According to this view (readily shared by the typical westerner who arrives in the Arab world for the first time), the two cultures need not be in any direct conflict; they can coexist very peacefully and fruitfully by respecting certain practical principles of segregation, as is done for example in the conservative oil states. But a symbiosis is out of the question.

A more extreme view is the one expressed by some spokesmen of militant Islamic movements, to the effect that Islam is the sole legitimate source of identity not only for the masses, but for the elite as well; that the secularizing influences on the elite are insidious forces of alienation; and that the very presence of western cultural norms constitutes an ominous danger to the health of Arab society, no less than military, political, or economic domination would do. This view amounts not to a call for segregation but for a cultural declaration of war, against the west but more particularly against the Arab secular elite.

No doubt this more extreme view is far from being dominant in any Arab country. today. Yet, with the revolution in Iran as an example standing before us, we must take it seriously. Whether the milder or the more extreme view is the more important one, both represent movement in a similar direction away from the integrative cultural assumptions of yesterday. It is not difficult to discern a number of reasons for them, in terms of changes taking place within Arab society and in its relationship with the west.

Certainly the current of Islamic resurgence sweeping the Middle East has much to do with the crisis that uncontrolled social and economic change has imposed on the daily lives of millions of ordinary people. Most often than not, rapid "development" has. brought with it inflation, shortages of housing and transport, conspicuous consumption, corruption, crime, the presence of large numbers of foreigners, and police repression.

The foreigners coming to the Arab world these days are a different lot than before. They come with less interest in the country and its people, with less desire to stay, and with a greater interest in making quick money. Many of them are working-class people with rough manners who know or care nothing about local standards of female modesty or the consumption of alcohol. The encounters of such people with the local population bear more resemblance to highway collisions than to social introductions, and can only reinforce the conviction of many of those who meet them that traditional social standards must be protected at all costs from barbarous western influences.

While the man in the street' undergoes this process of alienation from secular culture, his fellow citizen of higher social status is moving in an opposite direction. High government officials, businessmen, and professionals are increasingly preoccupied with the technicalities of making business deals with western firms, or of putting western equipment to use. The non-political technocrat is replacing yesterday's passionately nationalist intellectual as the predominant representative of the priorities of Arab governments, while within the Arab world the role-model for educated youth is no longer the revolutionary army officer or the crusading journalist but the well-dressed businessman with his briefcase, boarding a jet bound for Kuwait or Jeddah in search of a deal. Both to the technocrat and to the businessman, carrying on political arguments with the West appears as a sheer waste of time. And of course they are joined in this view by the westerners they meet in Kuwait and Jeddah who have come for similar purposes. The oil revolution, in fact, has stimulated the rise of a large new cosmopolitan class of Arab, western, and Japanese experts and entrepreneurs bound together by the same ultra-modern technological and commercial culture: the same ambitions, the same skills, the same language, the same instrumental ethics, and the same impatience with ideology and politics.

On both sides of the new polarized Arab society-the radicalized masses, the commercialized elites-the driving pressures are deep-seated and long-term. If the polarization so far is not acute in most Arab states, it may yet grow more severe. The ideas of nationalism are still very much alive in intellectual circles, but those circles are isolated and as an integrative force in Arab society the future of the ideas is doubtful. This is a dangerous situation, since it implies that the future ability of the best-educated citizens of each Arab country to relate to the mass of the population is also doubtful. If the problem is to be overcome, it may be because a new and more dynamic set of ideas - a new "political religion" - has risen to the surface, to take the place of the old. But this will take time, and the shape it will assume cannot be foretold.

If the polarization so far is not acute in most Arab states, it may yet grow more severe.

Article taken from "Middle East Insight", May 1982  

* The foreigners coming to the Arab world these days are a different lot than before. They come with less interest in the country and its people, with less desire to stay, and with a greater interest in making quick money. The encounters of such people with the local population can only reinforce the conviction of many of those who meet them that traditional social standards must be protected at all costs from barbarous western influences.

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Last updated on 23/12/98