In the early years of the revolutions, the majority of Arab intellectuals were overwhelmingly optimistic if the label was true, from the ocean to the Gulf, and their various intellectual and cultural forms. The source of this optimism was based on slogans raised in the streets of Arab cities, such as freedom, justice and human dignity, slogans that appeared - At the time of the revolutions, it is a universal consensus, expressing in essence an agreement that brings together the slogans of the modern world itself with all its varied and conflicting ideologies, and the mouthpiece of the pro-Arab elites was confident: who in the modern world today can disguise demands such as individual freedoms father Democracy and respect for human rights, citizenship, the rule of law and the constitution ?!
All of this was before everyone woke up to the nightmare of "counter-revolutions" and the bloody massacres of the "liberal democratic spring" preached by many pro-Arab intellectuals.
In their diversity, the interpretations and interpretations of an event such as the Arab Spring revolutions agreed upon a basic narrative, namely, the resumption of the entry of Arab societies into modernity, i.e., the completion of their formation as a modern and contemporary political meeting, or in another form that revolutions are the public reaction to the crisis of Arab modernity as authoritarian and military. In its acquisition of non-modern features such as sectarianism and tribalism, but the same interpretations differed in contrast to the project of revolutions, where the intellectual and philosopher Enlightenment Hashem Saleh in his book "Arab uprisings in the light of the philosophy of history" to the fact that these revolutions are deep in the secular revolutions Modernism in Europe and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, putting the youth of the revolutions as secular modernist forces in the face of reactionary forces, which include the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi movements, in parallel with the confrontation of military regimes such as the Egyptian regime, the Syrian sectarian-military, and the tribal Libya, which is cloaked with a speech on socialism and Arab nationalism. And, finally, the tribal religious kingdoms of the Gulf, and thus the project of Arab revolutions by Hashim Saleh is to work to create a secular society rational and secular states and systems that give Islamic law and religious reference from the public domain completely, as a way Q: Towards modernity and the modern world, Hashim Saleh did not talk much about the mechanisms of political representation, the peaceful transfer of power, political pluralism, the separation of powers and the basic principles of democracy.
| "The Arab Uprisings in the Light of the Philosophy of History" by Hashim Saleh (Web Links) |
From different cognitive and analytical backgrounds, similar theses came to each of the eminent intellectuals, Dr. Burhan Ghalioun and Azmi Bishara, each of whom viewed the Arab revolutions as the best evidence that Arab societies, with all their cultural, religious and historical heritage, are no less aspiring to emancipation than others. The Arab and Islamic cultural viability of healthy integration and creativity in the modern world without the need to break with heritage, summarizing the Arab problem from their point of view in the political systems and the structure of the Arab countries themselves.
Both Burhan Ghalioun and Azmi Bishara elaborated their theses as a scientific response to the classical Orientalist and Enlightenment theses that prevailed especially since the defeat of Arab nationalism in the July War of 67 until after the Third Democratic Wave in Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s reached a kind of cultural imperative of the world. These theses see that Arab societies carry within them what hinders their integration into a pluralistic, democratic and just legal environment, thus the tyranny experienced by these societies becomes, according to that vision, a natural product of the components of their culture and history: In his book Arab Tribulation: The State Against the Nation, Burhan Ghalioun argued that the cause of the Arab tribulation was the state itself, not society, and that the state and its organs aborted the historic transition to modernity. When it stood as a bandit at important historical junctures, it did not leave the Arab community to its traditional social formations, nor did it allow it to become a modern, understanding national society governed by law and the constitution.
All of these theses and others, such as that of Marxist Gilbert Ashkar, in his book The People Want: A Radical Research in the Arab Uprising, though more cautious and less optimistic, spoke with a confident tone about the future, that almost all of them considered the revolutions a victory for his thesis and his ideas for its diversity, amid This atmosphere of celebration of revolutions and peoples, the Lebanese writer and thinker Hazem Saghieh engaged in writing his book "The long collapse .. The historical background of the uprisings of the Arab Mashreq", when the book was a shock aroused controversy, and the source of shock here was not the content of what Hazem Saghia put forward only , But in the timing of the release Hazem Saghieh began writing the book in the first year of the Arab revolutions in 2011 until it was released in early 2013.While the prevailing optimism and sense of victory, Saghieh in his book not only warns against the defeat of revolutions, but heralds a prolonged collapse of the Arab East.
Hazem Saghieh is characterized by his access to the most complex ideas in an easy and decisive language at the same time, and his books are always controversial, as in the "Arabs between stone and corn", "Farewell of Arabism," and "The Nationalists of the Orient", which throughout the expression of a listening journey Rich and volatile political and intellectual, which he describes as a reflection of a region that has rarely known stability, Hazem began to listen to his life as a radical Marxist, like many of his generation, angry with the world. Arab work on utilizing them and integrating into the limiting world The positive interaction with its strength, values and ideas, and his latter wrote ear recent book "The collapse of the long-standing Arab bright" pessimistic suddenly the time of its release, what pregnancy firm ears alone on this harsh pessimism toward the not too distant future that awaits the Arab Mashreq?
The main saying of the book .. The policy of hostility to politics
Hazem Saghieh begins in the historical exploration since the beginning of the modern formation of the Arab East, following a time and space wide historical question the most current and present, how the state of affairs and the meeting in the Arab Mashreq to what it has become? In the expanded introduction to the book and its first chapters, the author argues that the Arab Mashreq societies have entered into modern politics with the sole narrow gateway of conflict with the other modern Western colonialist. "The people of the region are" against "colonialism and later imperialism, then America in particular, but they are not aware of what They are precisely as homelands and groups and on what their national identity is centered on, ie the conditions of their political meeting.
This history, which was loaded with a great deal of questions, choices and experiences, bore a great deal of confusion in a modern world. Its choices are new and untested, but they are "rejected" by them to the same extent. This has resulted in a noticeable lack of interest in modern politics in modern Arab political culture. These include processes such as constitutional, legal, juridical, and legal reform, as well as the development of economic, education, and health programs, above all politics as the space for the fundamental struggle for freedom.
Saghieh explained that the centrality gained by the conflict with the other, and the other here is the modernity - as Saghieh decided - the Arab societies in two problems, the first victory of what is outside the border over what is within the borders in the formation of the political sphere, which helped regimes to build The legitimacy of the position on the outside or the enemy - in the imagination of the people - regardless of the internal situation, what is important is to resist colonialism and the opposition to normalization and the fight against imperialism, which has been a major contribution to the creation of the disposal of politics as a management of the people and their pension and above all their rights and freedom, and building Healthy and sound foundations for Moa City.
| Author Hazem Saghieh (Websites) |
The second problem - in the eyes of Saghia - was the formation of the political identity of the Arab East as opposed to all that is modern and Western, which deprived Arab societies from dealing positively with everything that would help them in developing an inherent position of political legitimacy and re-engineering their societies within the limits of public political civil as well. On the development of an attitude towards the individual and his rights and freedom before the Authority, which are issues in which the West has made considerable political and human rights.
This "Third World Anti-Tendency", as the author called it, had to reproduce many of the Arab cultural and life components within its framework, allowing the establishment of populist populist regimes based primarily on the politicization of these cultural components and invested in building a political identity and moral legitimacy that opposes the development of these societies to reality Better, for example, the image of Islam adopted by religious elites and mass Islamist political movements has always ceased with the first Islam. The biography of the Prophet and the conquest of the caliphs and the first Umayyad state occupies the image of modern Islam among Islamists, and before them nationalists and Baathists, times as many aspects of Islamic history over its temporal and spatial extent, including social, economic and cultural aspects, such as scientific movements, translation movements and acculturation of civilizations and cultures. Other.
But the irony here - according to the writer - that the interest in the broad historical image of the act of Islam in history came from other circles, such as the academic circles of Orientalism, where the Arab and Islamic presence is rare if not hostile, and the same applies to commercial Islam and the history of Islamic markets and their relationship to the modern economy, All these vast historical components were sidelined in favor of tribal Islam and a loud and controversial war, boring in political slogans about restoring lost glory, conquering Andalusia, and talking about an empire that reaches its borders to China in response to Western colonial superiority, without talking about how Manage actual Muslim countries and resolve their structural crises.
Democracy lies in the ability of society to produce a social contract between its various constituencies, social and political forces and different institutional structures.
This narrow view of the self helped to engineer the "other" - as Saghia describes it - as a reflection of it, that is, as a constant and unhistorical essence that does not budge from his steady and poor crusader identity, which was most evident in the nationalist, Islamic and left-Islamic Arab discourses that were The ideological basis of Nasirism and Ba'athism for hegemony before it was also the currents of political Islam, and Arab societies fell victim to a paradox that was the main reason for their historical plight. A symbol of the fragmentation, colonialism, and dominance of the Christian Crusader West, at the same time currents of antagonism in all their orientations were very enthusiastic in taking advantage of the tools offered by modernity, especially when they hold power, Saghieh explains that point: At the same time, they were accumulating the state's own techniques of control, security, bureaucracy, surveillance, recruitment, cultural domination and sovereignty, without developing a position of political legitimacy and legal and constitutional structure that rationalized these technologies and made them democratic, representative and for their own interests. Or less cruel and violent in the worst conditions. "
Saghieh's historical narrative on the modern history of the Levant produced the main argument of the book, the cultural antagonism, where a significant difference emerges between Hazem Saghieh's and others' arguments, whereas in a different historical narrative, Ghalion's blame places most of the blame on the political systems and the state apparatus itself. Saghieh focuses on the basis of the historical forms of the East in the political and populist culture within the societies that accompanied the formation of the modern Orient itself, where the international situation and the emergence of the post-World War I world contributed to the creation of that culture among all political actors in the Arab Mashreq. He puts the tyranny of political currents with inherent authoritarianism and state apparatuses as one of the products of modern Arab culture, not heritage, as in the classical literature of the Enlightenment such as Hashim Saleh and many Orientalists' literature, but it is the product of modern Arab political thought, especially its elitist and populist ideology, which was formed within the framework of and in the face of modernity. Both.
Freedom, democracy and prolonged collapse
Saghieh concludes that the re-creation of the Arab Mashreq patriots is the lifeblood of a prolonged state of collapse
Under this main argument, which was the basic node in the long historical narrative proposed by Hazem Saghieh, he brings us to the most fundamental point in his fears about the future of the Arab Mashreq, when Saghieh strictly separates freedom from democracy. “Freedom and dignity are natural or near-normal concepts. The nature and human instinct is normal, and because of this it is common when it restores the image of sparrow and cage, and is used extensively symbolism of prison and jail .. But democracy is an institutional, political and ideological concept that does not test the will of society, but its abilities and structures, culture and social fabric and the extent of Ahlit For this historical mission, governance here is not valor and courage in the face of the security machine, but the extent of the existence of the middle class and the relationship between cities and the countryside and the state of elites, education and culture, not to mention the widening of tolerance in society or atrophy.
Democracy lies in the ability of society to produce a social contract between its various constituencies, different social and political forces and institutional structures. If the metaphorical image of freedom is the image of a prisoner or prisoner who breaks its limitations, the metaphorical image of democracy is by building free people for political, security, cultural, health, and other public institutions that participate in their administration, and they also abide by them.
Saghieh decides that democracy, of course, sometimes limits freedom by institutionalizing it to abolish absolute and anarchic freedoms when it becomes a constraint on other freedoms.Freedom outside democracy allows, for example, the propagation of ethnic or sectarian values, or the destruction of ideological, sectarian, or even class opponents. Liberal democracy, by definition, exists to prevent it. Here, Hazem Saghieh explains the cause of the prolonged collapse that awaits the Arab Mashreq. "To escape this nightmare fate, Arab revolutions must not only demand freedom, but also need to reach safety to re-create and produce nationalism itself, in its content and forms," he said. After the disintegration of the nationalist, third-world nationalist dictatorship that had ruled the Levant since the end of the Ottoman Sultanate, with the decline of the regimes on which it was ruled, it began to cover this failure on the disintegration of the social fabric of its countries, and reproduced previous nervous, sectarian and minority divisions, as well as the concerns of minorities, sects and cats. The vast population of rural people, tribes and families, has been spared the authoritarian technical inflation of a country where they do not see themselves as represented within it. "
Failure to formulate a real social contract may open the door for either a repetition of the Iraqi scene the day after the destruction of Iraqi Baathist authority and entry into an open civil war.
These historical accumulations (antagonistic or anti-dubious tendency in the least of all Western and modern - excessive technical modernization without the development of human rights and cultural positions of the mechanisms of modern political legitimacy that would rationalize this technical modernization - contributed to the engineering of the West as a continuous conspiracy against the Islamic and Arab self It also reinforced the fears of members of minorities, sects and even ideological organizations and provided them with a war spirit and mafia tactics to defend their existence and effectiveness, thus spreading a state of uncertainty and silent civil war among the modernist forces. Both traditional and traditional - within societies, the division has been exacerbated by the emergence of the state as a means of domination and oppression in the hands of those who acquire it, and not as a group of public institutions for the conduct of common life.
Accordingly, Saghieh concludes that the re-creation of the patriots of the Arab Mashreq is the lifeblood of the long-term state of collapse that may drift to it, if only its revolutionaries and militants demand freedom only without formulating a real social contract, which may open the door for either to repeat the Iraqi scene the day after the destruction of Baathist authority Iraq and entering into an open civil war, or the old regimes return more repressive and show itself as truth or claim as a single barrier against the state of brutality and the war of all against all, or in the phrase "freedom of all against all."
At the beginning of 2013, Hazem Saghieh wonders: “Are we taking the opportunity or squandering it? Are the costs of revolutions after the destruction of the legacy of political and social structures and modernist illegal regimes too big to bear? Is it possible to proceed from this very low historical threshold? Or are we already starting to slide towards our long collapse? ”Dear reader, you are free to imagine the answer to our reality after those few years.