Customer Reviews

Arabs at the Crossroads: Political Identity and Nationalism

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I recommend this book very highly. Khashan is a professor at the American University of Beirut and is the perfect man to to tell us about the predicament of the Arabs. He is neither an apologist for the Arabs nor a Thomas L. Friedman type of enemy. He sees things as they are: he demonstrates that Western imperialism and Zionist colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries have soured the Arabs on democracy and Westernization by polluting their experience of democracy and the West with totalitarian colonial regimes (in Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iraq, Palestine . . .) and the ongoing injustice towards the Palestinians. He reminds us that the Arabs expected to share in the self-determination of nations that was in the air around WW I, and that the colonial regimes the West created in their stead was felt by them as a great betrayal. The European support for the creation of Israel was also a betrayal they have not been permitted to forget as Israel continues to expand day by day with US complicity. And yet, he also demonstrates that the Arab countries have never really changed from the basically tribal and particularistic places they were before the modern period -- if anyone needs to be reminded that the states of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon were created by the West for their own purposes, and that there is little indentification with these states among those who live under them. Look at Lebanon! Khashan shows how the failure of Arab nationalism and the betrayals by the West have contributed to the rise of the Islamists, who represent something of a retreat to the pre-colonial era, but also that there is no future in the Islamist states, as witness Iran and Afghanistan. He calls for a new rationalism that is also culturally compatible with Islamic values, but asks that people forget the old dreams of an Islamic state a la the Taliban. Khashan looks at the wreck of the Arab world and the triumph of the US and Israel at dictating regional developments, and asks the Arabs to wake up and stop rejecting the only path that can bring them out of their sloth: to introduce rational politics in place of dictatorships, representational government, a workable and modern Arab and Islamic culture, and economies that function (i.e., not the old socialist states that barely function). Since none of these are now present, he is pointing the way towards something that he hopes can emerge. But surely he is correct, and all of the supporters of Hamas or the Saudis or Bin Ladin are barking up the wrong tree. There may be a certain comfort for traditional people in falling back on old certainties, but there is no future in Islamis. It is more of a sign of weakness and wounded pride than anything else, and Khashan tells us so in no uncertain terms. US patriots and Zionists will not want to hear anything from Khashan except his discriptions of Arab weakness and the regional sources of it. Many angry Arabs may be furious at Khashan for suggesting that there are any causes of Arab weakness besides Israel and the US. What makes Khashan so valuable is that he spares no one, and acts as what a scholar should be: a critic. For that reason, I recommedn him very highly.