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Recent events have once again demonstrated that “political awareness” in Arab countries lags far behind “political reality”:
[Reality] is countries and borders, border guards, maps and flags, titles and armies, policies and sovereignties, national occasions, diplomatic representation and passports, while [consciousness] is firmly residing in the eras of the caliphate, the imamate and the great conquests of ancient times, or residing at best in The fifties and sixties of the twentieth century, the era that witnessed the peak of the flowering of winged Arab nationalist dreams.
In this article, we show how the political division of the Arabs in the form of “country states” is a thousand times better than the other realistic alternative to the division, the signs of which have been apparent for more than two decades in the form of chaotic, violent fragmentation into sects and warring religious, tribal, and ethnic groups.
We are keen to avoid comparison between the Qatari state and its dreamy, romantic, unitary alternatives, both Arab and Islamic.
Instead, we will limit ourselves to addressing the failure or impossibility of these alternatives, and ultimately make the comparison between the national state as a reality, and its realistic alternatives as they appeared in experience, meaning that the reference of preference is simple and modest and is based on measuring reality to reality, instead of measuring it to an example.
It follows from this that demolishing or weakening national states, as stand-alone legal political units - especially those that have not yet been destroyed - will not open the way to the unity of an Arab national empire or to a universal Islamic unity, but rather to division, disintegration and loss of the kind we see in Iraq. , Yemen, Libya and Syria!
There is nothing wrong here with using the combined term: “national state,” which was coined from an Arab nationalist perspective to negatively denote the Arab entities that gained independence in the last century.
It is more appropriate to call it by the name that has a positive connotation, so we say:
"National state", or even "nation-state".
From the perspective of Arab thought, a state that does not contain within its entity the peoples of the Arab nation “from the ocean to the Gulf” is nothing but a “national state,” as distinct from the major Arab state that it should be.
However, apart from what the Arab nationalist believes, it is important to note that we mean the same thing when we say the nation-state, the nation-state, or the nation-state.
This results in the fact that a nation that is not a state cannot be considered a nation, and a nationality that is not a state cannot be considered a nationality.
The state is a condition of eligibility for a nation to be a true nation, nationalism to be a true nationality, and a homeland to be a true homeland.
The so-called "United Nations" are at the same time "united states".
Therefore, every independent and recognized Arab “state” is a “nation” since it has a seat in the United Nations.
What happened in the last century;
It is that the Arab national state triumphed as a process, while Arab national unity triumphed as a theory.
The first was realized on the ground and in facts and objects, and the second took hold in minds, consciences, books, magazines, poems, and arts.
The nation in this case is not a religious, cultural, ethnic, or linguistic association. Rather, it must be a political association that the recognition of the community of states grants it a legal status and a symbolic legal status, nominally placing it on an equal footing with major and minor states.
Hence, Arab nationalism is an airy hypothesis that has no entity in reality, while regional nationalism [or regional] nationalism is an existing reality and has an entity.
In the words of the Syrian thinker and critic George Tarabishi, in a book published in the early 1980s, the Arab countries have “gentrified,” meaning they have acquired a “national” character.
Thanks to the state that expressed it, (Tarabishi, The National State and National Theory, p. 29).
The state creates the nation in the beginning, not the other way around
Thanks to the power and effectiveness of the state, nations have always been created on an unprecedented basis.
The state, as we use it throughout the article, is a broader, more comprehensive, and more recent concept than simply the government, authority, or emirate.
The Arab activist’s talk about the artificial borders of the national state leads to the belief that the borders of the rest of the world’s countries are natural and eternal!
In fact, there is no state that is an artificial entity, meaning that it is an entity that arose in history, which is what distinguishes it from natural entities such as plains, mountains, rivers, and seas.
That the state is like this is taken for granted and does not require any effort to prove it.
The situation is what happened in the last century;
It is that the Arab national state triumphed as a process, while Arab national unity triumphed as a theory.
The first was realized on the ground and in facts and objects, and the second was embodied in minds, consciences, books, magazines, poems and arts.
The first existed as a process without a theoretical support, and the second began and continued its existence as a theory without a practical support in the form of a single state that includes all the Arab countries.
We emerge from the above with a preliminary conclusion, which is that we have in the Arab countries two types of nationalism: the nationalism of a call and a failed ambition, and the nationalism of reality and an achieved existence.
The first is the nationalism of Arabism, which is a bond of language, culture and thought, not a bond of state, society and politics.
The second is the nationalism of the country state, which is an objective association that includes language, religion, land, state, and national traditions and rituals.
The greatest extent reached by militant unionist Arabism, after decades of seeking political verification on the ground, did not go beyond the experience of missionary party organizations that crossed regional national borders, such as the Arab Socialist Baath Party, which ruled - ironically! - in two regional states, Syria and Iraq.
There is also the Arab Nationalist movement.
Perhaps Gamal Abdel Nasser's embrace of the pan-Arabist idea as a doctrine for his ruling regime in Egypt after the revolution of July 23, 1952 was its greatest victory.
Nasserism and Baathism formed the two main poles of the Arab movement.
If Nasserism is Arabism with an Egyptian color embodied in a beloved leader, then Baathism is a party organization with a dual color: Levantine and Iraqi, at least by virtue of the founders and theorists of the early Baathism primarily belonging to the Levant: (Zaki al-Arsuzi, Michel Aflaq, and Salah al-Bitar) and Iraq (Fouad al-Rikabi).
Abdel Nasser, for his part, tried to make Egypt a model for the Al-Qaeda region.
In the words of Nadim Al-Bitar, that is, to be a center of action and mobilization towards Arab unification in the Prussian-German manner led by Bismarck.
The Prussian model was one of the favorite measurement models among Arab irredentist thinkers, and what a misleading measurement it is!
As a first step in the path of Arab unity, the unity between Egypt and Syria was announced in 1958, and the unified state was called the “United Arab Republic,” and the Yemeni Imam Mutawakkilite federation joined the union, but no one took its accession seriously.
The rosy visions quickly collapsed on the rocks of facts, and the most cruel facts were: the secession of Syria in 1961 AD, and the defeat of June 1967 AD.
However, the secession of Syria was not followed by any presentation by both parties of pan-Arabist claims.
The public mood at that time allowed Arab unity to be betrayed in action while remaining faithful to it in word.
[In 1962 AD, after the separation, Abdel Nasser founded the Arab Socialist Union Party].
On the surface, the incidents of secession and the setback of 1967 appeared to be the sign of the end for Arabism in its Nasserist form only.
In depth, these two seismic events were the beginning of the complete death of Arab unitary utopia that transcends reality as a whole.
All of this resulted in wide and varied waves of rebound, some of which were explicit and some of which were subtle.
The apostasy had two major aspects:
A reaction towards the utopianism of Islamic unity, which expressed itself through what was called “political Islam.”
Although the horizon of this apostasy in theory is broader than the horizon of Arabism, and more impossible to achieve politically, on the level of experience it is realized in unfortunate forms of religious sectarianism, fragmentation, and civil fighting.
A reaction towards local specificity within the borders of the national national state, which means going far in intellectual, moral and emotional reconciliation with this state, which the Arabist ideology has continued to call “the sin of colonialism.”
This apostasy, despite the vulgarity that sometimes tinges it, is healthier than the first type.
A rare warmth of thought based on the Qatari experience
In the mid-nineties of the last century, the Bahraini researcher and thinker, Muhammad Jaber Al-Ansari, issued his important and bold study, “The Political Formation of the Arabs and the Meaning of the Qatari State,” in which the writer celebrates the experience of the “national state,” in a confrontation with those who addressed it with condemnation, reproach, and skepticism.
Al-Ansari found in it a positive, progressive historical and moral value, as it is “the framework and possible practical political form” in the path of Arab development.
Al-Ansari often mentioned - even in his other writings - the modernity of this experience, preferring to attribute the deficiencies in practices, or weakness in structures and structures, and other defects - such as the concentration of power in the hands of a strong and important leader - to objective factors related to immaturity. And the experiment is complete.
From his point of view, “completing state building is a process of historical growth that cannot be accomplished overnight,” because the state in its modern style in the largest part of the Arab region is a phenomenon that has no historical precedents of its kind.
He liked to repeat that the Arabs are “a nation with a united conscience and a divided entity,” and the reason is that the strength of the “moral ties” between them, represented in language, religion, feelings, and literature, is always matched by a severe weakness in the realistic “material ties” between them: (cities and buildings, and a unified political center. (State), administrative structures, systems and institutions, methods of intensive communication and interaction, and fixed interests).
For this writer, “the unity of civilization, culture, and language does not necessarily mean the unity of society and state, the establishment and continuation of which requires objective, organic communication on a material and institutional basis of social, economic, and political integration and interaction,” (Al-Ansari, “The Political Formation of the Arabs,” p. 124).
The legal and political formation of the Arabs in the last century into independent national national states and entities represents a factor of strength and protection, not a factor of weakness - as the popular idea claims - and this organized, codified “partition” is the historical, practical, and realistic alternative to the sentimental, lyrical dream of Arab unity, and it is undoubtedly superior to the new fragmentation. Examples of which we see on the rubble of the collapsed Arab countries
Al-Ansari provides explanations that seem very logical - geographical, historical, economic and urban - for the political fragmentation that has announced itself through the national state, downplaying explanations that link it to a conspiracy behind colonialism, and arguing that this fragmentation is more objective than the dream of unification.
And if we say;
The national state is a case of “fragmentation” according to the standard of the Arab nationalist dream. Al-Ansari - on the contrary - considers it a founding and unifying act compared to what was the case in the Arab region of isolation and local Arab tribal, ethnic and geographical fragmentation.
For example, how could the establishment of the Saudi state and its extension over two-thirds of the Arabian Peninsula be fragmented?
Fragmentation is a characteristic that only suits the previous situation of the Saudi state.
In addition, Arabism is an essential element in the formation of the Saudi state, as evidenced by its name: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Rather, the Saudi story embodies a distinct brand of Arab nationalism deeply attuned to Islam.
It is a practical category in contact with reality.
He did not invent a theory of nationalism, but rather his Arabism was inherent in him self-evidently, by virtue of place, the origin of Arabism and Islam, so he did not feel the need to present a mass nationalist discourse in the European manner, as the pioneers of modern Arab nationalism did in the Levant, Iraq, and Egypt.
Sectarianism is an alternative to nationalism
For our part, we will go beyond the point at which Al-Ansari stopped, and we say:
The legal and political formation of the Arabs in the last century into independent national national states and entities represents a factor of strength and protection, not a factor of weakness - as the popular idea claims - and this organized, codified “partition” is the practical, realistic historical alternative to the lyrical, sentimental dream of Arab unity, and it is undoubtedly superior to The new fragmentation, examples of which we are witnessing on the rubble of the collapsed Arab states: armed religious groups organizing in cross-border axes.
We know full well that these groups, whose nightmarish rise we have witnessed in the last two decades, will also end up extending their influence over specific geographical areas (that is, over a smaller diameter within the large fragmented diameter).
Let us look at the Shiite factions in post-Saddam Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the jihadi organizations in Syria, or even the regional, tribal and ethnic organizations and groups in Sudan and Libya, and let us ask ourselves this question: Are these divisive entities superior and more useful than the national state? ?
The difference in all respects is still, and will remain, undoubtedly in favor of the Qatari state.
It is enough to know the fact that alternative phenomena rely in their activity on a message that addresses the sectarian religious conscience instead of addressing the monotheistic national conscience.
These phenomena, even though they appear today to be revolutionary in their language, are reckless in their principles, and even if their theoretical horizons are Islamic, monotheistic, and international, and even if they raise slogans of confrontation and resistance to America and Israel, their political ambition will lead them in practice with the passage of time to act with a realism similar to the realism and calculations of states, but On a smaller, partial scale.
If the national state is destined to completely disappear from existence and these phenomena take its place, then these phenomena are also destined to take on a national character, but on the small parts that they occupy, and they will seek to codify and legitimize their status, and even to do what the national states were forced to do during their journey. Formative [which was, in its principle, revolutionary against imperialism and colonialism], meaning that the alternative entities will experience all the experiences that the national state has experienced and all the obstacles and restrictions it has encountered!
Therefore, we are not wrong if we say that the existing Arab national state with its known borders, and with all its imperfections, is what prevents the Arab world from falling into an abyss of weakness and absence all at once, deeper and darker than it is today.
Indeed, this state represents one of the finest and most fertile political experiences of the Arabs, since the fall of the Umayyad Arab Caliphate at the hands of the Abbasids and their helpers, the people of Khorasan.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.